With all of these foul-ups, it feels like a small miracle that anyone ever gets vaccinated.
In today’s Morning Jolt, I explore the bewildering question of a report that 20 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been misplaced already. The shipments were tracked from the manufacturer to the states and then . . . no one is quite sure, possibly “boxed away in warehouses, sitting idle in freezers or floating elsewhere in the complex distribution pipeline that runs from the administration to individual states.” I laid out the states who had administered the fewest shots, and laid out some troubling examples of doses being rerouted to wealthy hospital donors, friends, and in one case, stolen.
There are a few other situations in the past few weeks that partially explain why some shots aren’t getting injected into arms. We can begin with the unexpected menace of flat-earth anti-vaccine pharmacists:
When a pharmacist discovered that 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine were left to spoil outside a Wisconsin clinic’s refrigerator in December, the worker immediately suspected a colleague who had spread false and outlandish claims, according to court records.
For months, Steven Brandenburg, the overnight pharmacist at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., had said he thought the vaccine would harm people, make them infertile and implant them with microchips.
Now, federal authorities say his belief in debunked claims went beyond the vaccine. The pharmacist, who has agreed to plead guilty to charges of attempting to spoil the vaccine, also believes the Earth is flat and that the sky is not real, according to court documents.
The pharmacist removed 57 vials, each containing enough for 10 vaccinations, of the Moderna vaccine from the hospital’s refrigerators the nights of Dec. 24 and Dec. 25, prosecutors say.
This lunatic just wasted 570 doses!
As if that isn’t maddening enough, apparently the hospital cleaning crews need to be specifically informed to make sure the freezers don’t get unplugged:
Nearly 2,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine spoiled this week at the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center in Boston, a spokesperson confirmed, at a time when vaccine doses coming to Massachusetts are down 73%.
The Veterans Affairs Boston Pharmacy staff on Tuesday found out that a freezer at the Jamaica Plain campus failed, ruining 1,900 doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
A plug was loose after a contractor “accidentally removed it while cleaning,” according to the VA spokesperson. The freezer was in “a secure location” and had an alarm system installed.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the incident and why the monitoring and alarm system didn’t work. Replenishment doses are in process, the spokesperson said, and the VA does not “foresee disruption of our vaccination effort.”
And apparently a similar error ruined doses down in Florida . . .
More than 1,100 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine had to be destroyed in Palm Beach County because they were not kept cold enough.
The Health Care District of Palm Beach County blames the issue on human error.
The mistake was discovered on the morning of Jan. 22.
Officials with the Health Care District said they were doing a standard quality check that morning when they realized 232 vials of the vaccine were too warm.
Two-hundred thirty-two vials equal 1,160 doses of the vaccine.
What’s more, some doses are being stored in facilities without backup generators . . .
Kaiser Permanente confirmed Thursday evening that 165 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses stored at a Lakewood facility were ruined during a power outage caused by high winds.
. . . and somehow, en route to Michigan, a shipment of doses got too cold:
The majority of 21 shipments of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday were spoiled en route to Michigan, likely delaying the state’s vaccination efforts this week, the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.
The vaccine’s distributor, McKesson Corp., notified the state that the majority of the 11,900 doses in the shipments got too cold and are now unusable.
When all of these anecdotes are laid out, it feels like a small miracle that anyone ever gets vaccinated.