By Todd Richmond | Associated Press
MADISON, Delete. – Authorities on Thursday arrested a pharmacist in a Milwaukee suburb who is suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by taking it out of the fridge for two nights.
Grafton police said the former Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless threat, falsifying a prescription drug and criminal property damage. The department said in a press release that he was in prison. Police have not identified the pharmacist and say he has not yet been formally charged.
His motive remains unclear. Police said that detectives think he knew the tainted doses would be useless and that people who received them would mistakenly think they were vaccinated when they were not.
Advocate Aurora Health Care Chief Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters during a conference call Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials containing hundreds of doses of the Moderna vaccine from the refrigerator at a Grafton medical center from Dec. 24 to Dec. 25. returned them and then left them out on the night of December 25 on Saturday. The bottles contain sufficient doses to inoculate 570 people.
A pharmacy assistant discovered the bottles outside the fridge on Saturday morning. Bahr said the pharmacist initially said he had removed the vaccine to access other items in the refrigerator and that he had not accidentally replaced it.
The Moderna vaccine has a 12-hour shelf life outside of the refrigerator, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before throwing the rest away. Police said the disposed doses were worth between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.
Bahr said health system officials were more suspicious of the pharmacist when they viewed the incident. After multiple interviews, the pharmacist admitted on Wednesday that he had deliberately removed the vaccine and left it overnight from December 24 to December 25, put it back in the refrigerator at one point, and then put it back in the refrigerator overnight from December 25 to December 26 again.
Bahr said this means the doses people received on Saturday are pretty much useless. Moderna has told Aurora that there are no security risks, but the system is monitoring them closely, he said.
Bahr declined to comment on the pharmacist’s motive.