GRAFTON, Wis. — An Advocate Aurora Health employee in Milwaukee "intentionally" removed 57 vials of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine from refrigeration, failed to put them back, and rendered them ineffective. They have been fired for doing so, Advocate Aurora Health said in a press release.
Watch the health care group discuss the situation below:
Over the weekend, 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine had to be thrown out when an employee removed the vials from the Grafton clinic refrigerator in order to access something else and did not return them.
Originally, Aurora Health Care said that they, "were inadvertently removed from a pharmacy refrigerator overnight."
However, on Wednesday night, they came out with a statement saying the employee did so "intentionally" and never returned the vaccines.
Aurora Health said they are still investigating the incident but that the employee has been fired.
Here is the entire statement from Aurora.
"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. 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."
This article was written by James Groh for WTMJ.