A paramedic and firefighter from Polk County, Florida, USA, wanted by police for theft of vaccines against Covid-19, surrendered to authorities on Wednesday following the arrest of one of his subordinates on the same case.
Anthony Damiano, 55, who has been a fire crew captain for 14 years, has been charged with misconduct and petty theft, Polk County Police Department in central Florida said.
Damiano was supposed to be arrested upon returning to his home after an out-of-state trip, but the paramedic, who initially claimed to have taken the vaccines to supply his mother, turned himself in to a police station without resistance.
Another paramedic related to the case, Spanish Joshua Colón, 31, is accused not only of stealing three doses of a covid-19 vaccine, but also of filling out the necessary documents to be vaccinated on behalf of others people and providing information. .
The Polk sheriff’s office said on Tuesday that Colón resigned the Friday before and was arrested on Monday, January 25, but is now out on bail.
Colon was tasked with vaccinating first responders at a Polk fire station and doing the regulatory paperwork to record who was vaccinated and how the vaccines that the state provides for free were administered.
Colón told police that before giving the vaccines, his supervisor “ joked ” with him about taking certain doses for his mother and then asked him to report three doses as useless.
When he went to lunch he left all the vaccines in a refrigerator with a label and when he came back three were gone, but he did not inform the authorities.
Joshua tried to cover up the captain, Joshua set the tone for vaccine theft, Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference Tuesday.
According to the police report, Damiano admitted to taking the vaccines and told Colón to report those vaccines as if they had fallen from the fire station.
Police said the supervisor’s mother never received the vaccinations.
In Florida, for now, only health and emergency personnel, those admitted to nursing homes and those who care for them, as well as those over the age of 65, can be vaccinated.
Currently, there is a shortage of vaccines that makes the elderly unsettled and worried as infections and deaths from covid-19 are on the rise.
Florida Governor Republican Ron DeSantis hailed this Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s administration had made a “modest increase” in the supply of covid-19 vaccines for this state, but asked for more doses and “as soon as possible. . “.
As of March, the state has collected a total of 1,676,171 cases and 26,249 deaths.