The Wisconsin hospital pharmacist who was fired and arrested for intentionally trying to destroy hundreds of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, officials said on Tuesday.
Steven Brandenburg was fired from the Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, in December, after the hospital said it admitted to “intentionally removing the vaccine from the refrigerator”. Brandenburg, a pharmacist, has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of attempting to tamper with consumer products without consideration, the Justice Department said.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for each charge.
“According to the plea agreement, Brandenburg said he was skeptical of vaccines in general and the Modern vaccine specifically,” the department said on Tuesday. “Brandenburg has communicated his beliefs about vaccines to his co-workers, at least for the past two years.”
Prosecutors said Brandenburg intentionally removed doses of the Modern vaccine from its refrigerator during two successive night shifts last month, possibly rendering them ineffective because the vaccine vials must be stored at specific temperatures.
Brandenburg then returned the vaccines to the refrigerator after learning that they had been left out, leading to 57 people being injected with the potentially spoiled vaccines, the Justice Department said.
Grafton police said Brandenburg is an “admitted conspiracy theorist” and “told investigators that he believed the Covid-19 vaccine was not safe for people and could harm them and alter their DNA”.
The Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board suspended Brandenburg’s license earlier this month, which did not allow him to practice at a pharmacy in the state.
Anyone who tampered with doses of Covid-19 will face justice, said Attorney General Matthew D. Krueger on Tuesday.
“Distributing the COVID-19 vaccine is critical to overcoming this pandemic, which continues to end lives and upset our economy,” said Krueger.
The Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, currently approved for emergency use in the United States, are not yet widely available. States have struggled to meet demand as vaccine supply chains, competing for a scarce resource with each other and with the rest of the world.
More than 23.5 million doses have been administered across the country as of Tuesday, according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 3.4 million people have been fully vaccinated with both doses since the first shipments were released on December 14.
President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he planned to buy 200 million additional doses in an effort to increase distribution.
