PHILADELPHIA (AP) – When Philadelphia started getting its first batches of COVID-19 vaccines, it wanted to partner with someone who could get a mass vaccination spot quickly.
City Hall officials may have looked across the skyline at world-renowned health care providers from the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, or Jefferson Health.
Instead, they chose a 22-year-old psychology graduate student with a few faltering startups on his resume. And last week, amid concerns about his qualifications and Philly Fighting COVID’s earnings status, the city closed its operation at the downtown convention center.
Where were all the people with login credentials? Why did a child have to come and help the city? said the student, Andrei Doroshin, in an interview with The Associated Press.
‘I am a crazy graduate. But you know what? We did it. We vaccinated 7,000 people, ”said the Drexel University student. “This was us who did our part in these crazy times.”
City officials said they gave him the job because last year he and his friends organized one of the community groups that set up COVID-19 test sites in the city. But they stopped the vaccination when they learned that Doroshin had changed his privacy statement to potentially sell patient data, a development he calls an issue he has quickly addressed.
It is not clear when the city will find a new site operator.
“They were doing quite well with the vaccinations. They apparently decided they were going to make money with some of this information, which was wrong, and we ended our relationship with them, ” Mayor Jim Kenney said at a news conference on Tuesday, citing the work of local news outlets in the airing of worries. “And that’s the end of them.”
Doroshin also admitted that he took four doses of the Pfizer vaccine home and administered to friends, even though he is neither a nurse nor a licensed health professional. He said he did this only after exhausting other options. 100 additional doses were set to expire that night, and the site was only able to complete 96 eligible recipients, he said.
“They had to either go into an arm or be thrown out,” said Doroshin, who said he had previously done intramuscular injections. “I felt ethically okay. … There is nothing I did that was illegal. “
State and local prosecutors are now considering the matter.
Many believe the situation is a bigger issue across the health care system, in Philadelphia and across the country.
Public health budgets had been badly hit before the pandemic, leaving local and state governments ill-equipped to roll out a large-scale vaccination program. That made them look for COVID-19 partners.
“I think there is a place in our health system for our innovative partners,” said Julia Lynch, a health policy expert who teaches at Penn. But maybe this isn’t the time to experiment with disruptors? Perhaps this is the time when we should turn to a health service delivery infrastructure that works like a well-oiled machine? ”
She is also saddened that city data shows that only 12% of the city’s vaccinations have gone to black residents, who make up 42% of the city’s population. She hoped, like others, that the job might have gone to a more established group, like the Black Doctors Consortium, which has been testing and vaccinating people in low-income areas of the city for the past year.
Lucinda Ayers, 74, had taken the opportunity to book an appointment on February 12 through Doroshin’s website at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and wonders if the city shouldn’t have helped him comply.
‘They were vaccinating people. I’m not in it anymore, ”said Ayers, who, despite sitting online for hours, had no luck finding a new appointment. “There is so much uncertainty about the information that is coming out.”
Doroshin switched from the COVID-19 testing operation to the vaccination work during graduation when he learned about the city’s need. He said he borrowed $ 250,000 from a family friend for start-up costs, and the city – by nothing more than a verbal agreement – gave him a discount on the vaccine supply, with the top priority of health workers.
He said he agreed to pay $ 1 million to lease the convention center for six months and expected to charge the city $ 500,000 a month once it was fully operational. He hired about 30 people, although at least some of the doctors, nurses, and nursing students who did the injections were volunteers, he said.
“I would get a salary,” he said. “In a perfect world, I wanted to vaccinate Philly within six months and then apply for my PhD.”
Dr. Thomas Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said the group had a good track record of running the tests this week, so “we decided to give them the opportunity to run mass clinics, and the first mass clinic went pretty well. “
For now, the city has pledged to ensure that people who got their first vaccines there can get their booster shots.
“It certainly shows why we need a true public health system,” said Councilman Helen Gym, who noted that two private hospitals in the city have closed since 2019, while the city is still one of the few major US cities without a public hospital. . .
She called the aborted rollout of the vaccine “a blatant, serious failure.”
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