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The hospital worker who intentionally ruined hundreds of COVID vaccines has been arrested.
It was announced yesterday, December 31, that that the individual had removed 57 vials of the Moderna vaccination from the refrigerator at the Aurora Medical Center, Wisconsin, and failed to put them back.
While many would presume he had done it by mistake, Advocate Aurora Health confirmed that it was done intentionally.
Part of the company’s statement read, ‘Earlier this week, we learned that 57 vials of Moderna vaccine were removed from a pharmacy refrigerator at Aurora Medical Center – Grafton overnight, resulting in more than 500 doses of vaccine being discarded.’
It continued:
We immediately launched an internal review and were led to believe this was caused by inadvertent human error. The individual in question today acknowledged that they intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration.
Following the incident, it’s believed the culprit was arrested yesterday for their actions. The cost of the ruined vaccine was $8,000 to $11,000, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The news outlet also reported that the police have recommended felony charges of recklessly endangering safety, adulterating a prescription drug, and criminal damage to property.
While Grafton Police did not release the man’s name, they confirmed that he’s currently being held at Ozaukee County Jail and is yet to be formally charged. The FBI and The US Food and Drug Administration are investigating the matter alongside the police.
Moderna’s vaccine was approved for use in the US on December 18 after the country’s regulatory board passed Pfizer’s vaccine just days before.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the US’ top infectious disease expert, described the two vaccinations as a ‘triumph’.
In a statement he said:
This to me is a triumph of multiyear investment in biomedical research that culminated in something that was not only done in record time, in the sense of never before has anybody even imagined you would get vaccines to people in less than a year from the time that the sequence was made known.
As of today, January 1, there has been 20 million cases of the virus in the US, with a harrowing 346,000 deaths.
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel