Texas doctor Hasan Gokal, who was fired and charged with stealing doses of coronavirus vaccine, defended his decision, saying he would not allow the vaccine doses to expire and be lost.
“This is a county of 5 million people and we had the first 3,000 thousand doses. There was no place to throw any of them. Never,” Gokal, former doctor with Texas Department of Public Health Harris County and medical director for vaccine launch in county, said in a document interview with CBS News.
“When you have something so precious that saves your life, it would hurt to throw it away,” he added.
The incident happened on December 29 and Harris District Attorney Kim Ogg charged him shortly after stealing 10 doses at the vaccination site. The charge could lead to a $ 4,000 fine and a year in prison.
Gokal told CBS News that there were 10 doses left at a vaccination site at the end of the night and that he had to administer them in six hours, otherwise it would expire.
Gokal wanted to use the last 10 doses and checked with all the employees and police who were at the vaccination event, but either already had the vaccine or refused it. He says he checked with a public health official in Harris County to see if he could find 10 people to administer and the official agreed.
“At that point, I started going through my phone list, thinking about who might ‘qualify for the vaccine,'” Gokal told CBS News.
He found nine people who were elderly or had health conditions that put them at higher risk of death from the virus. In the last minutes before the vaccine expired, he vaccinated his wife because he could not find anyone and only one dose remained.
His wife has pulmonary sarcoidosis, a lung disease that he thought qualified her for the vaccine.
“He abused his position to place his friends and family in front of people who went through the legal process to be there,” Ogg said in a statement. “What he did was illegal and he will be held accountable according to the law.”
A judge has denied the allegations, but Ogg is still taking the case to a grand jury.