“It became clear that it was a situation involving a bad actor instead of a bad lawsuit,” said Dr. Jeff Bahr, chairman of Aurora Healthcare Medical Group.
It is unclear what will happen if changes to health systems such as Advocate Aurora take place, but officials say both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are well documented.
State health officials said WISN any incident involving wasted doses should be reported and investigated.
However, there is a growing demand for transparency regarding the launch of the vaccine itself.
“I think there is an opportunity for improved transparency. We are looking at 50 states doing this together at the same time,” said US Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin.
Senator Steil and Wisconsin Tammy Baldwin sent a letter to Governor Tony Evers before the Grafton incident, asking for more details about the state plan.
Grafton is also involved with the FBI.
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State health officials said they are constantly working to improve the system, in what has been described as the largest public health enterprise in generations.
Neither state health officials nor the governor have publicly answered questions from the incident, as official allegations are being resolved.
Authorities arrested a suburban pharmacist in Milwaukee on Thursday on suspicion of deliberately destroying hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by removing it from the refrigerator for two nights.
Grafton Police said former pharmacist Aurora Health’s lawyer was arrested on suspicion of reckless danger, adulterating a prescription drug and damaging property. Police have not identified the pharmacist, saying he has not yet been officially charged.
Police said detectives believe they know the pampered doses will be useless, and people who receive them would mistakenly believe they were vaccinated when they did not.
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Bahr told reporters during a teleconference on Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials containing hundreds of doses of Moderna vaccine from the refrigerator at a Grafton Medical Center overnight on Dec. 24 to Dec. 25. -returned, then left them again on the night of December 25 until Saturday. The vials contained enough doses to inoculate 570 people.
A pharmacy technician found the bottles outside the refrigerator on Saturday morning. Bahr said the pharmacist initially said he removed the vaccine to access other items in the refrigerator and that he had failed to replace it.
The Modern vaccine is still viable for 12 hours outside of refrigeration, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before throwing away the rest. Police said the doses were between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.
Bahr said health system officials became more suspicious of the pharmacist as they analyzed the incident. After several interviews, the pharmacist admitted on Wednesday that he deliberately removed the vaccine and left it out overnight on December 24 on December 25, returned it to the refrigerator at some point and then took it out again overnight between December 25 and 26. December.
Bahr said that means the doses people received on Saturday are almost useless. The modern told Aurora that there are no safety issues, but the system monitors them closely, he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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