Milwaukee health center worker is fired for deliberately destroying 500 Moderna vaccines by removing them from a fridge
- More than 50 vials of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine were taken from a refrigerator at a Milwaukee area hospital
- Advocate Aurora Health in Wisconsin said an employee admitted to intentionally removing the vials
- Some of the coronavirus vaccine was used before it degraded, but another 500 doses had to be tossed
- Officials with the health system say the vials were removed intentionally, and she was fired
- Both federally approved vaccines — one made by Moderna, the other by Pfizer — require strict cold-storage conditions to preserve their effectiveness
- The US has only vaccinated a total of 2.6 million people, new CDC data shows - despite promising to give 20 million people their first doses by the end of 2020
- There were more than 125,000 hospitalizations on Wednesday
- US also added an additional 3,903 deaths as the CDC warned that there could be 82,000 more fatalities in the next 24 days
A Health center worker from Milwaukee 'intentionally' removed 57 vials of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine from the refrigerator and then failed to put them back rendering them useless.
The employee has been fired as a result of their actions according to Advocate Aurora Health.
Over the weekend, 57 vials - or 500 doses - of the Moderna vaccine had to be thrown out after the worker took the vials from a clinic refrigerator in Grafton.
Originally, Aurora Health Care said they 'were inadvertently removed from a pharmacy refrigerator overnight,' but on Wednesday night it was determined that the employee did so 'intentionally' and never returned the vaccine.
Several vials of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine were taken from a refrigerator at a Milwaukee area hospital causing hundreds of doses to be spoiled
Advocate Aurora Health in Wisconsin said an employee deliberately removed more than 50 vials of the vaccine to get to another item and left the vials out without putting them back
Aurora Health say they are still investigating the incident.
'Earlier this week, we learned that 57 vials of Moderna vaccine were removed from a pharmacy refrigerator at Aurora Medical Center - Grafton overnight, resulting in more than 500 doses of vaccine being discarded.
'We immediately launched an internal review and were led to believe this was caused by inadvertent human error. The individual in question today acknowledged that they intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration.
57 vials of the Moderna vaccine had to be thrown away after the worker took the vials from a clinic refrigerator at the Aurora Medical Center in Grafton
The vaccines are in limited supply and are currently being administered first to frontline healthcare workers.. Pictures, registered nurse Amanda Wright, left, gives a shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to registered nurse Paul Smith at Augusta University in Augusta, on Wednesday morning
'We have notified appropriate authorities for further investigation. We continue to believe that vaccination is our way out of the pandemic. We are more than disappointed that this individual's actions will result in a delay of more than 500 people receiving their vaccine. This was a violation of our core values, and the individual is no longer employed by us.'
Both federally approved vaccines — one made by Moderna, the other by Pfizer — require strict cold-storage conditions to preserve their effectiveness.
The vaccines are in limited supply and are currently being administered first to frontline healthcare workers.
The US has only administered about 10 percent - less than 2.6million - of the 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccine it promised to give to Americans by the end of 2020, despite having distributed more than 12million doses to states and territories.
CDC data reveal that as of 9am on Wednesday morning fewer than 2.6million people had received their first doses of Moderna or Pfizer's vaccines - both of which are difficult to ship and handle because they need to be stored at freezing temperatures.
The bottleneck is caused by officials on state and federal level who have failed to create plans to get those shots into the arms of Americans according to a former FDA official who told DailyMail.com that the failure is akin to dropping the baton on the last leg of the vaccine race.
The hold-ups came as the US set yet another grim record for the deadliest day yet with more than 3,900 deaths recorded in a single day - and a new mutant 'super strain' of the virus was detected in southern California and Colorado.
While Americans continue to wait to be vaccinated, the UK on Wednesday authorized a vaccine by AstraZeneca that will almost certainly accelerate vaccine distribution there because it is cheaper, far easier to ship, handle and store than the Pfizer and Moderna alternatives.
Yet US regulators have no intention of approving the more efficient shot until April - two months after AstraZeneca's US trial will have enough data to prove to the FDA that it works.
In the US, the federal government has left distribution plans almost entirely up to individual states, where health departments are already stretched thin by surging COVID-19 cases.
As of Wednesday morning, the US had distributed 12.4 million doses of vaccine and given out fewer than 2.6 million, according to CDC data updated Wednesday evening
Tom, 69, and Judy Barrett, 67, from Marco Island, Florida wait in line in the early morning hours of Wednesday at Lakes Park Regional Library in Fort Myers for the vaccine. They had been waiting in line since 8.30pm on Tuesday and by 6am Wednesday the line stretched for blocks
The result is a helter-skelter patchwork of last minute plans that look vastly different from state to state, bumping drug addicts and prisoners to the front of the line in some places, while in others, like Florida, elderly Americans are camping out in lawn chairs overnight in a bid to get vaccinated.
Others say essential workers and the elderly are being told to 'call around' to see if they can get a vaccine.
As anger mounted that only about 230,000 Americans are getting vaccinated a day, President Trump tweeted on Wednesday that states had the doses and needed to 'get moving!'.
Even Operation Warp Speed's chief scientist Dr Moncef Slaoui admitted. that the US vaccine roll-out 'should be better' .
Trump took to Twitter to blame states for slow administration of vaccines on Wednesday
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