Some lucky Kentucky residents managed to jump in line and receive COVID-19 vaccines – because their local Walgreens had extra doses.
Louisville restaurant owner Andrew Masterson told the Courier-Journal that he was among those immunized, despite not being part of a priority group, after a friend told him that Pfizer photos were available at Walgreens.
“He called us and we ran away immediately,” Masterson said of him and his wife.
“It was pure luck,” added Masterson, whose wife has stage 4 cancer.
A Walgreens spokesman told the media that although the general public would not normally be offered the vaccine in front of groups such as front-line healthcare workers and nursing home residents, the pharmacy chain giant woke up with expired doses.
Additional images were provided to local first responders, store workers and residents, many of whom are over the age of 65, said spokesman Phil Caruso.
It was “an isolated situation where the amount of vaccine doses requested by the facilities exceeded the real need,” Caruso told Courier-Journal.
“These measures have been taken to ensure that each dose of a limited amount of vaccine has been used to protect patients and communities.”
It was not clear how many extra doses there were.
Caruso said Walgreens will reach those who received the leftovers to make sure they receive the second necessary immunization.
Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, said Monday that something similar happened at a Walgreens in Lexington last week – and he is not happy about it.
The United States is still running a limited supply of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, with health officials saying it will be months before everyone has access to them.
“The reaction was not what it should have been,” Beshear said of the way Kentucky pharmacies administered the extra doses.
“Now, I think he came from a good place?” Yes, because they didn’t want any of them to be lost, “he said. “But should it have been done differently? Yes.”
The governor said the state, which needs to vaccinate priority groups, will work “to make sure the right things happen next time.”
The development came after a Disney worker in California boasted on Facebook on December 20 that she also received the vaccination, even though she is not part of any priority group, due to extra doses at the hospital where her husband’s “big business” They. .