Some lucky Kentucky residents were able to skip the line and get COVID-19 vaccines – because their local Walgreens had extra doses.
Louisville restaurant owner Andrew Masterson told the Courier-Journal he was one of the immunized people despite not being part of a priority group, after a friend told him Pfizer injections were available at their local Walgreens.
“He called us and we ran right upstairs,” Masterson said of himself and his wife.
“It was pure luck,” added Masterson, whose wife has stage 4 cancer.
A Walgreens representative told the outlet that while the general public would not normally be offered the vaccine to groups such as primary care health workers and nursing home residents, the pharmacy chain giant found that the remaining doses were running off.
The extra shots were offered to local aid workers, the store workers and residents too, many of whom are over 65, spokesman Phil Caruso said.
It was “an isolated situation where the amount of vaccine doses requested by facilities exceeded the actual need,” Caruso told the Courier-Journal.
“These measures were taken to ensure that every dose of a limited vaccine supply was used to protect patients and communities.”
It was not clear how many additional doses there were.
Caruso said Walgreens would contact those who had the leftover injections to make sure they also get their second required immunization.
Kentucky governor Andy Beshear said on Monday that something similar happened in a Walgreens in Lexington last week – and he’s not happy about it.
The US is still rolling out its limited supply of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and health officials say it will be months for everyone to access them.
“The response was not what it should have been,” Beshear said of how the Kentucky drugstores handled their extra doses.
‘Now, do I think it came from a good place? Yes, because they didn’t want it to be lost, ”he said. “But should it have happened differently? Yes.”
The governor said the state, which requires priority groups to be vaccinated first, will work “to make sure the right thing is done next time.”
The development came after a Disney employee in California bragged on Facebook on Dec. 20 that she had also received the vaccination, even though she is not in a priority group, due to extra doses at the hospital where her husband’s “ great ” aunt works.