This article was originally published on December 31, 2020
MADISON, Delete. (AP) Authorities on Thursday arrested a pharmacist in a Milwaukee suburb who is suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by taking them out of the fridge for two nights.
The arrest marks another setback in what was a slower, messier start to vaccinating Americans than public health officials expected. Leaders in Wisconsin and other states have begged the Trump administration for more doses, as health workers and seniors are lining up for the life-saving vaccine.
Police in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, said the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment, falsifying a prescription drug and criminal property damage, all crimes. The pharmacist has been fired and the police 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 removed the bottles to access other items in the refrigerator and that he had accidentally not put them back.
The Moderna vaccine is viable for 12 hours out of the refrigerator, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before throwing out the rest. 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 acknowledged on Wednesday that he had deliberately removed the vaccine over the two nights, Bahr said.
That means the doses people got on Saturday are pretty much useless, he said. Moderna has told Aurora there are no safety concerns, but the hospital system is closely monitoring people who have received the tainted doses, he said.
Bahr declined to comment on the pharmacist’s motive. He said the hospital system’s security protocols are sound.
“This was a situation involving a bad actor,” he said, “as opposed to a bad trial.”
The number of COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin has been on the rise in recent days after dropping in early December. The State Department of Health Services reported 3,810 new confirmed cases on Thursday, marking the third day in a row of increasing daily infections. The state has now seen 481,102 cases.
COVID-19 was a factor in 41 additional deaths, bringing the state’s total death toll to 4,859. The survival rate remained unchanged at 99%.
According to the latest data from the health department, just over 47,150 people had been vaccinated in Wisconsin Monday morning. The state has been assigned 265,575 doses of both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Monday morning, only about 157,000 doses had arrived.
Democratic Governor Tony Evers wrote a letter to President Donald Trump earlier in December asking him to prioritize more doses for Wisconsin because of the high number of cases, flooded hospitals and a lack of statewide mitigation mandates.
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