“It has become clear that this was a situation involving a bad actor rather than a bad process,” said Dr. Jeff Bahr, president of the Aurora Healthcare medical group.
It is unclear what it will do if changes in healthcare systems such as lawyer Aurora occur, but officials say both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are thoroughly documented.
State health officials he told WISN any incidents involving missed doses should be reported and investigated.
However, there is a growing call for transparency in the deployment of the vaccine itself.
“I think there’s an opportunity to improve transparency. We’re seeing 50 states develop it together at once,” said U.S. Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin.
Steil and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers before the Grafton incident, asking for more details on the state plan.
In Grafton, the FBI is also involved.
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State health officials said they are continually working to improve the system, in what has been described as the largest public health company for generations.
Neither state health officials nor the governor have publicly answered questions since the incident, as formal charges are now pending.
Authorities on Thursday arrested a Milwaukee suburban pharmacist suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by taking it out of the refrigerator for two nights.
Grafton Police Department said former lawyer Aurora Health’s pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless danger, adulteration of prescription drugs and criminal damage to property. Police have not identified the pharmacist, saying he has not yet been formally charged.
Police said detectives believe they knew the damaged doses would be useless and that people who received them would mistakenly think they had been vaccinated when they had not.
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Bahr told reporters during a teleconference Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials containing hundreds of doses of the Modern Refrigeration Vaccine at a Grafton Medical Center during the night of Dec. 24-25. returned and left them again on the night of December 25th to 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 he had removed the vaccine to access other items in the refrigerator and that he had inadvertently not replaced it.
The Modern vaccine is still viable for 12 hours outside of refrigeration, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before discarding the rest. Police said the rejected doses were worth between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.
Bahr said health care officials suspected the pharmacist more as they reviewed the incident. After multiple interviews, the pharmacist acknowledged Wednesday that he deliberately removed the vaccine and left it out overnight from Dec. 24 to Dec. 25, returned it to the refrigerator at some point and then withdrew it for the night of December 25-26.
Bahr said this means the doses people received on Saturday are virtually useless. Modern has told Aurora there are no security issues, but the system is monitoring them closely, he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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