The Wisconsin hospital worker who was accused of spoiling hundreds of doses of COVID-19 vaccine didn’t mess with the vials once – he left them uncooled twice, his boss claims.
Steven Brandenburg, 46, is jailed on three criminal counts – recklessly compromising security, falsification of a prescription drug and criminal property damage – although police have not officially identified him as the alleged culprit, the Daily reported Mail.
Records from the Ozaukee County Jail show that Brandenburg was booked on New Year’s Eve, the same day police arrested the perpetrator, and state records show that he is a licensed pharmacist.
Police as well as federal authorities – the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration – are investigating the mess at Advocate Aurora Health Hospital in Grafton, about 18 miles north of Milwaukee.
The culprit had left 57 bottles at room temperature, not one night as first suspected, but two – on Dec. 24 and 25, Dr. Jeff Bahr told reporters in a Zoom briefing Thursday.
The perpetrator put the bottles back on ice after the first night and then came back to do the same trick a second night, Bahr told reporters.
A pharmacy technician found the bottles on a counter on the morning of December 26 and put them back in the refrigerator. Later that day, 57 people were vaccinated at Aurora Medical Center Grafton because the hospital was unaware that the vials had been left out for two nights. The vaccine can be kept at room temperature for up to 12 hours, according to maker Moderna.
The vaccinees have been notified, Bahr said; hospital workers threw out the rest of the bottles.
“There is no evidence that the vaccines harmed them, other than that they may have been less effective or ineffective,” he said.
The employee responsible for omitting the bottles told hospital officials that the move was an “accidental mistake” made during the process of getting another drug from the refrigerator, Bahr said.
But hospital officials became “increasingly suspicious” of the employee after an internal evaluation, he said. They interviewed the employee several times before finally admitting that he messed with the bottles.
The employee has not explained his actions and the police have no motive for the crimes yet.
Bahr assured the public that there was no evidence that the vaccine had been tampered with in any other way.
“This was a situation involving a bad actor as opposed to a bad trial,” he said.