A Texas doctor had little choice one night in late December. The remaining doses in a COVID-19 vaccine vial would break down within a few hours unless they were injected into volunteer patients, but Dr. Hasan Gokal did not find enough. Instead of throwing them away, Gokal traveled through his community and unearthed enough people willing to take the vaccines before they expired. With minutes to go and no one else was within reach, Gokal gave the final dose to his wife.
Is Gokal a hero to make sure these doses lead to vaccinations, boosting efforts to reduce community transmission? Or is it that Gokal is a thief and, even worse, a criminal against “equity”?
The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a Covid-19 vaccine vial had been opened on the night of late December, it had to find 10 people eligible for the remaining doses before the prized drug expired. In six hours.
Revolting, the doctor called home and directed people to their home outside of Houston. Some were known; others, unknown. A noagenarian bed. A woman in her 80s with dementia. A mother with a child using a fan.
After midnight, and just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a lung disease that leaves her breathless.
For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his job in the government and then charged with stealing 10 doses of vaccine worth a total of $ 135, a noteworthy misdemeanor that threw his name and the its cup all over the world.
Ahasome might think the dose for his wife is the one provoked by the authorities. However, Gokal’s wife has severe chronic lung dysfunction and may have been qualified according to federal standards to receive the shot at the time. However, this was not the issue that triggered the Gokal businessman. Instead, it was Gokal’s lack of focus on “equity” that tipped the scales and led to his dismissal, at least according to Gokal’s testimony:
Several days later, the doctor said, the supervisor and human resources director summoned him to ask if he had administered 10 doses outside of the Dec. 29 scheduled event. and was quickly dismissed.
Officials said he had violated the protocol and should have returned the remaining doses to the office or disposed of them, the doctor recalled. He also said one of the officials startled him by questioning the lack of fairness among those he had vaccinated.
“Are you suggesting there were too many Indian names in this group?” Dr. Gokal said he asked.
Exactly, he said he was told.
That was – and still is – precisely the problem with vaccine launches. Officials inside and outside government have focused on equity issues to such an extent that they prefer spoil vaccine doses that allow them weapons ready. It’s not that equity issues don’t matter, but a deadly pandemic needs vaccines to be produced as widely and quickly as possible. Each missed dose is another person who can still spread the virus and can produce mutations that can make the pandemic worse.
Instead of acclaiming Gokal’s agility in making sure no doses are wasted, his employer encouraged him and Harris County prosecutors accused him of theft. A judge dismissed the indictment and wrote that he “emphatically rejects” the notion of theft in the context of a doctor vaccinating people in the midst of a public health emergency. However, prosecutors decided to take the case to the grand jury to see if they could reinstate the theft charge against Gokal.
However, one has to wonder what another judge will do with the case, even with a grand jury bill after Judge Franklin Bynum’s reprimand to prosecutors the first time. Hopefully, this judge will also realize that this clown show is short of a car. Gokal should be reinstated and thanked, he should not step out of his profession to make sure that COVID-19 vaccine doses are not lost. And one has to wonder how many more doses are left to spoil to this day, due to the spectacle of this chase against Gokal just to do his job.