MIDLOTHIAN, Va. – Kroger, as of Thursday evening, has yet to provide any explanation as to why several people were mistakenly injected with an empty syringe instead of a COVID-19 vaccine at a Central Virginia clinic.
Several people entered the Midlothian Kroger on Monday and Tuesday waiting to be vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.
Instead, an empty syringe was injected into them.
A Kroger spokesman said fewer than ten people were affected.
One, a man who spoke anonymously with CBS 6, said a Kroger employee initially told him he was being given a saline shot by accident.
“I assumed the person had taken the wrong bottle out of the fridge and I remember when I was in the room it looked like there were several hypodermic needles that I assumed were full,” he said.
Kroger later clarified that it was not a saline solution, but an empty needle and that they initially received misinformation.
“We will have a nursing station that removes vaccines from the vials,” Cat Long, a spokesman for Richmond-Henrico health districts, said as he explained the vaccination process at mass vaccination clinics. “Then, after filling the syringes, they give these vaccines to the nurses who actually vaccinate people.”
He said Richmond and Henrico have had no trouble injecting people with empty syringes, but that they have understood how it can happen.
“I guess the shot is clear, so it can be a bit of a challenge, but we had no problem keeping them apart,” Long said.
Kelly Goode, a pharmacist and professor at VCU School of Medicine, agreed.
“Sometimes it can be a little hard to know if there’s liquid,” Goode said.
To avoid confusing empty syringes with full syringes, he said pharmacists need a procedure in place.
“Once you’ve filled it, it goes somewhere else so you don’t mix the unfilled syringes with full syringes,” Goode explained. “And so you shouldn’t have empty syringes on the counter and then fill syringes on the same counter, because that could cause errors.”
Goode said pharmacists also need different training on the administration of the three vaccines and that vaccinators should have been retrained when the Johnson & Johnson dose, which was used at Kroger, was available. .
“You should learn how to prepare differently in some of the nuances for the storage of this vaccine, which is a little different from the Pfizer and Modern vaccine,” Goode said.
Goode also explained that there was no evidence that injecting a hollow shot into a deltoid muscle, which is where COVID-19 vaccines go, would cause damage because the muscle would absorb air.
Meanwhile, Long stressed that people should trust the vaccination process because problems do not arise often. When they do, Long said the CDC and affected people are notified immediately.
“While these situations are very serious, they are very rare,” Long said. “We manage thousands of shots a day and we’ve had very few incidents.”
The Virginia Department of Health said Kroger is taking steps to make sure this mistake does not happen again.