At least two investigations are underway into how the city’s health department hired Andrei Doroshin, a student at Drexel University, who had almost no public health experience.
“You know what, we did the job. We did the job. We vaccinated almost 7,000 people,” Doroshin said in an interview with Action News.
He said the Philadelphia Department of Health is fortunate that his company was used to operate the vaccine clinic at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for health care workers.
“They couldn’t do it themselves. Dr. Farley cheated on it. He couldn’t do it alone,” Doroshin said.
City council is scheduled for a hearing Friday. Council President Darrell Clarke wants to ask the city to sign written contracts with vaccine partners, given what he called the embarrassment and distrust that followed. Meanwhile, the city’s Inspector General’s Office is examining whether Dr. Caroline Johnson, a deputy in the health department, has unfairly provided Doroshin Group and another potential applicant with budget information that has not been made public.
“She did not favor one of these organizations over the other. She did not provide information on how to provide a clinical vaccination plan or other inside information. And she did not provide any additional dose of vaccine to any organization,” Farley said of Johnson.
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Johnson, an infectious disease specialist, resigned over the weekend. Mayor Jim Kenney on Monday praised his previous work for the city, but said “we will go out from time to time,” as the city responds to the pandemic.
City council is planning a hearing on Friday on work on Doroshin’s group, Philly Fighting Covid, which distributed nearly 7,000 vaccines this month before the city shut it down amid questions about its competence and patient privacy policy. .
“It was clear that this was a connection. Why wasn’t that written?” Council member Cindy Bass asked at a virtual press conference on Monday afternoon.
Doroshin insisted he had done nothing wrong, although he admits he took four doses of the hard-to-get vaccine home and gave it to friends.
“The recommendation from the health department has been put in every arm. This is a war against a virus. At the end of the day, the doses were about to expire,” Doroshin said last week. “What would you have done? You have these four extra doses, you’ve called everyone, I’m about to expire, the instructions say you put them in one arm.”
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– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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