MIDLOTHIAN, Virginia. – Kroger, as of Thursday evening, has not yet offered explanations why several people were wrongly injected with an empty syringe instead of a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Central Virginia.
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.
A Kroger spokesman said less than 10 people were affected.
One of them, a man who spoke anonymously with CBS 6, said that a Kroger employee initially told him that he had been accidentally given a saline blow.
“I assumed that person had taken the wrong bottle out of the fridge and I remember that when I was in the room there seemed to be a series of hypodermic needles that I thought were full,” he said.
Kroger later clarified that it was not a saline solution, but rather an empty needle and that they initially received misinformation.
“We will have a nurse station that extracts vaccines from vials,” said Cat Long, a spokesman for Richmond-Henrico Health Districts, while explaining the vaccination process at mass vaccination clinics. “Then, after they’ve filled the syringes, they give these vaccines to the nurses who actually vaccinate people.”
She said Richmond and Henrico had no problem injecting people with empty syringes, but they understood how it could happen.
“The picture is clear, so it can be a little difficult to say, I guess, but we had no problem keeping them separate,” Long said.
Kelly Goode, a pharmacist and teacher at VCU Medical School, agreed.
“Sometimes it can be a little hard to tell if there’s liquid in there,” Goode said.
To avoid confusing empty syringes with filled syringes, she said pharmacists need a procedure.
“Once you’ve filled it, it goes somewhere else, so you don’t mix unfilled syringes with filled syringes,” Goode explained. “So you shouldn’t have empty syringes on the counter and then be filled with syringes on the same counter, because that could be a mistake.”
Goode said pharmacists also need different training to administer all three vaccines, and vaccinators should have been re-trained when the Johnson & Johnson dose, which was used at Kroger, become available.
“You’ll have to learn how to prepare differently in some of the shades for storing that vaccine, which is a little different from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine,” Goode said.
Goode also explained that there was no evidence that injecting a blank blow into a deltoid muscle, which is where COVID-19 vaccines go, would have caused injuries because the muscle would absorb air.
Meanwhile, Long stressed that people should trust the vaccination process because problems do not occur often. When they do, Long said the CDC and those affected are notified immediately.
“Although these situations are very serious, they are very rare,” Long said. “We manage thousands of photos a day and we have had very few incidents.”
The Virginia Department of Health said Kroger is taking steps to ensure that this mistake is not repeated.