A second hospital in California has been detained for giving the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to the relatives of its employees – instead of using the doses for the elderly or frontline workers.
The Southern California Hospital allowed its employees to invite family members to get vaccinated – just like another area hospital did last week, sparking criticism.
“The hospital planned to vaccinate all of their employees, but a lot of their staff declined and they were on a lot of thawed vaccines,” a woman vaccinated at Southern California Hospital told the Orange County Register. “They offered police officers, firefighters and first responders to get vaccinated and also told employees they could invite four family members.”
Culver City hospital was eventually inundated with requests from the general public and forced to return to vaccinating only front-line workers.
Any hospital decision to treat family members of staff goes against Centers for Disease Control guidelines, which call for inoculation during later stages of vaccine introduction.
Southern California Hospital is the second facility to be detained in the Golden State, providing “extra” doses of vaccine to family members.
Earlier this week, a Disney worker in California bragged on Facebook that she could get the vaccine because of an in-laws who were a “ big deal ” at Redlands Community Hospital.
“After doctors and staff who expressed interest in the vaccine were administered, there were several doses left,” the hospital told the Registry. “Because the reconstituted Pfizer vaccine must be used or disposed of within hours, different doses were administered to non-primary care professionals so that expensive vaccine would not be thrown away.