Offering these doses was “against protocol,” the governor said.
Members of the Kentucky public were lucky enough to get vaccinated for COVID-19 on Christmas Eve, when local Walgreens stores had extra doses that would have expired.
The overdoses were given to local first responders, Walgreens staff and Louisville and Lexington residents, many of whom were over 65, according to Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso.
“COVID-19 vaccines are not available to the general public at this time,” Caruso said in a statement. “We have experienced an isolated situation where the amount of vaccine doses requested by the facilities has exceeded the real need.”
In a telephone interview with ABC News, Andrew Masterson said he and his wife were happy to receive the serendipitous vaccine – and acknowledged that there are many vulnerable Americans still waiting to receive the shot.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” Masterson said. “I just felt like I had to jump at this opportunity. But I feel very guilty. I was lucky.”
He and his 16-year-old son were shopping on Christmas Eve at the last minute, when a friend who happened to stop at Walgreens discovered that there were extra doses. The friend immediately thought of the Mastersons – especially Melissa, Andrew’s wife, who was battling breast cancer, stage IV, for the second time.
“We hurried there, they took our names down, we had to get our doctor’s approval to make sure it was okay for Melissa to take her chemo medication – she waited a bit – but then we sat down, we received the shot, and five minutes later I was out the door, hopeful, “Masterson said.
Melissa had been remitted until January, when the cancer returned. It had spread to her column. She started chemotherapy in April – which Andrew remembers as a scary time: chemo can weaken the immune system, and Melissa understood it while the pandemic was steaming. When hospitals strengthened their visitor protocols, Andrew was able to visit her.
Andrew, a local restaurant owner who said he also hired Meals on Wheels to help pack and deliver meals for the elderly, was worried he would bring the virus home to his wife – or one of the recipients of high-risk meals.
Kentucky is in Phase 1A of vaccine distribution, which includes only health care workers and people in long-term care facilities. The state is expected to enter Phase 1B in February, according to the governor.
Although neither Andrew nor Melissa are part of the “1A” vaccine group, when given the opportunity, he felt the need to jump on him.
Even after receiving the first dose of vaccine, the Mastersons do not intend to lower their guard. “We still have an obligation to the general public to protect our neighbors and friends,” Andrew said. “Even if we could be safe or immune – we would pretend we weren’t.”
Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, said Monday that pharmacies in both cities administered additional doses of the vaccine after vaccinations in long-term care facilities and that offering these doses to the public was against the protocol. It was not clear how many people without priority received vaccines.
“I don’t think this was intentional and we need to understand that in such a massive enterprise, mistakes will happen,” Beshear said. Procedures are in place to ensure that “next time it will happen right,” he added.
In an interview with Good Morning America on Tuesday, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, spoke about the difficulties local health departments are distributing the vaccine without a national plan or funding.
“The biggest problem is the administration of the vaccine from the states into the arms of the people,” Jha said.
“We’re starting to see health departments that are really large, we have to try to figure out how to get all these vaccines into people, and it’s going much slower than I think the federal authorities thought they would be.”
William Gretsky of ABC News contributed to the report.
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