A pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital was fired for intentionally breaking hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by removing them from the refrigerator overnight and was arrested Thursday.
Police in Grafton, Wisc. – about 40 miles north of Milwaukee – confirmed the arrest, but did not immediately reveal the name of the suspect, who will be officially charged.
The suspect was arrested on suspicion of reckless threat, adulteration of a prescription drug and material damage to property.
Aurora Medical Center previously fired the pharmacist on Wednesday after admitting to deliberately removing 57 ampoules of the Moderna vaccine from a hospital refrigerator last week.
Each vial contains approximately 10 doses of vaccine.
It remains unclear what motivated the man to destroy the long-awaited vaccine.
Aurora’s lawyer, the group’s chief medical officer Jeff Bahr, said during a news conference Thursday that the pharmacist removed the vials from the cold store on Dec. 24 on Dec. 25, replaced them, and then left them on again. night from December 25 to December 26.
When a colleague discovered the placed bottles, the pharmacist initially acted as an accident, saying that he took them out of the fridge to access something else, then forgot to put them back.
When asked further, the pharmacist admitted that he intentionally disposed of the vaccines, hospital officials said.
With threads