MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Authorities arrested a suburban Milwaukee pharmacist Thursday suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by removing them from refrigeration for two nights.
Police in Grafton, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, said the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment, adulterating a prescription drug and criminal damage to property, all felonies. The pharmacist has been fired and police said in a news release that he was in jail. Police did not identify the pharmacist, saying he has not yet been formally charged.
His motive remains unclear. Police said that detectives believe he knew the spoiled doses would be useless and people who received them would mistakenly think they'd been vaccinated when they hadn't.
Advocate Aurora Health Care Chief Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters during a teleconference Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials that held hundreds of doses of the Moderna vaccine from refrigeration at a Grafton medical center overnight on Dec. 24 into Dec. 25, returned them, then left them out again on the night of Dec. 25 into Saturday. The vials contained enough doses to inoculate 570 people.
A pharmacy technician discovered the vials outside the refrigerator on Saturday morning. Bahr said the pharmacist initially said that he had removed the vials to access other items in the refrigerator and had inadvertently failed to put them back.
The Moderna vaccine is viable for 12 hours outside refrigeration, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before discarding the rest. Police said the discarded doses were worth between $8,000 and $11,000.
Bahr said health system officials grew more suspicious of the pharmacist as they reviewed the incident. After multiple interviews, the pharmacist acknowledged Wednesday that he removed the vaccine intentionally over the two nights, Bahr said.
That means that the doses people received Saturday are all but useless, he said. Moderna has told Aurora that there's no safety concerns, but the hospital system is closely monitoring the people who received the spoiled 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 process."
The number of COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin has been rising in recent days after dipping in early December. The state Department of Health Services reported 3,810 newly confirmed cases on Thursday, marking the third straight day of rising daily infections. The state has now seen 481,102 cases.
COVID-19 was a factor in 41 more deaths, pushing the state's overall death toll to 4,859. The survival rate remained unchanged at 99%.
A little more than 47,150 people had been vaccinated in Wisconsin as of Monday morning, according to the latest data from the health agency. The state has been allocated 265,575 doses of both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. As of Monday morning, only about 157,000 doses had arrived.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers wrote a letter to President Donald Trump earlier in December asking him to prioritize more doses for Wisconsin due to high case numbers, swamped hospitals and a lack of statewide mitigation mandates.
Think the rna triggers innate immune system?On Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 1:37 PM Biology Discussions <discussio...@gmail.com> wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9sFXXLJKoOn Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 3:01:19 PM UTC-8 deacon.d...@gmail.com wrote:I always find this question rather silly. RNA is simply a delivery method. Is the question whether RNA is safe? The answer is that large doses may trigger inflammatory response. This is less likely with the modified RNA like Moderna's. It is generally unlikely with either of them because they tested for it.If that's not the question, then is the question whether having immunity against COVID-19 Spike protein safe? Again, most likely yes, and mostly likely far more so than having it with full blown infection.On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 6:19:04 PM UTC-5 Mike Petersen wrote:Hello all,
How do you rate the safety of the new Corona vaccines, which are based on the principle of RNA vaccination?
Are there any studies online to read or are they not available to the public?
I wonder if you can realistically assess the risk at this point.
When I think about the Pandemrix vaccine in 2009 during the svine flu, where it was not known until years later that it caused narcolepsy in many cases due to an autoimmune reaction, it shows that one should be careful, especially with regard to the long-term effects.
Isn't there a great potential for autoimmune reactions especially with RNA vaccines? Thank you very much for your answers.--
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