The Wisconsin hospital worker accused of deliberately removing 57 vials of a COVID-19 vaccine from a pharmacy refrigerator has been arrested, local police reported Thursday. The employee had already been fired by the Aurora Medical Center, which said it had to throw away more than 500 doses of the vaccine as a result of the incident.
Grafton police said the person has been arrested on three recommended charges: first-degree recklessness that threatens security, adulteration of a prescription drug, and criminal property damage, all of which are felonies. Police did not name the person, but did identify him as a man. The suspect is being held in Ozaukee County Jail.
The hospital opened an investigation and was originally led to the belief that unintentional human error was to blame, CBS Chicago reported. But on Wednesday, the employee in charge admitted he did it on purpose, attorney Aurora Health said.
The department indicated that some patients had been vaccinated with the non-refrigerated doses. But it said health officials don’t believe anyone who has been given a dose that has not been properly refrigerated is at medical risk, and instead described those doses as “useless.” The department estimated the value of the tainted vaccines to be between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.
Grafton police said earlier that the department, the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration are “actively” investigating the matter.
“We continue to believe vaccination is our way out of the pandemic,” attorney Aurora Health said in a statement. “We are more than disappointed that this person’s actions will result in a delay of more than 500 people receiving their vaccine. This was a violation of our core values, and the person is no longer employed by us.”
Like the other vaccine approved for use in the United States made by Pfizer, the Moderna vaccine requires initial shipping and storage at deep-freeze temperatures, but can then be stored locally at more typical refrigeration temperatures for several days prior to use.
Despite the stated goal of federal officials to immunize 20 million Americans by the end of this year, only about 12 million doses had been distributed on Thursday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Data Tracker, and there were less than 3 million actually administered.
Officials from Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense and Operation Warp Speed - the military-led operation to deliver vaccines across the country – told reporters on Wednesday that the slower-than-expected delivery of the shots is partly due could be due to a delay in reporting, but they recognized that not all vaccine doses had reached their intended destinations.
Army General Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed’s chief operating officer, admitted that some of the doses were still “on the way,” as he spoke Wednesday. Nonetheless, he expressed confidence in the government’s efforts to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus.
“We are doing really well in distribution in my opinion,” he said, contradicting the CDC figures by saying on Wednesday that “more than 14 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed.”
Audrey McNamara from CBSNews.com contributed to this report.