The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. | New York Times - Dan Barry:
February 12, 2021 - "The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened on this late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious medicine expired.... Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home outside Houston.... A bed-bound nonagenarian. A woman in her 80s with dementia. A mother with a child who uses a ventilator. After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease....
"For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10 vaccine doses worth a total of $135.... Late last month, a judge dismissed the charge as groundless, after which the local district attorney vowed to present the matter to a grand jury....
"Dr. Gokal, 48, immigrated from Pakistan as a boy and earned a medical degree at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. After working at hospitals in Central New York, he moved to Texas in 2009 to oversee the emergency department at a suburban Houston hospital.... But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, ... the Harris County Public Health department recruited him in April to become the medical director for its Covid-response team.
"On Dec. 22, Dr. Gokal joined a conference call in which state health officials explained the protocols for administering the recently approved Moderna vaccine. The 10 or 11 doses in a vial are viable for six hours after the seal is punctured. Dr. Gokal said the advice was to vaccinate people eligible under the 1(a) category (health care workers and residents in long-term-care facilities), then those under the 1(b) category (people over 65 or with a health condition that increases risk of severe Covid-related illness). After that, he said, the message was: 'Just put it in people’s arms. We don’t want any doses to go to waste. Period.'
On Dec. 29, ... Dr. Gokal arrived before dawn at a park in the Houston suburb of Humble to supervise a vaccination event intended mostly for emergency workers.... Around 6:45 at night, ... an eligible person arrived for a shot. A nurse punctured a new vial to administer the vaccine, which activated the six-hour time limit for the 10 remaining doses. The chances of 10 eligible people suddenly showing up were slim.... But Dr. Gokal said he was determined not to waste a single dose.... Dr. Gokal said he called a Harris County public health official in charge of operations to report his plans to find 10 people to receive the remaining doses. He said he was told, simply: OK....
"The next morning, he said, he submitted the paperwork for the 10 people he had vaccinated the previous night, including his wife. He said he also informed his supervisor and colleagues of what he had done, and why. Several days later, the doctor said, that supervisor and the human resources director summoned him to ask whether he had administered 10 doses outside of the scheduled event on Dec. 29. He said he had, in keeping with guidelines not to waste the vaccine — and was promptly fired.....
"On Jan. 21, about two weeks after the doctor’s termination, a friend called to say that a local reporter had just tweeted about him. At that very moment, one of his three children answered the door to bright lights and a thrust microphone.... This was how Dr. Gokal learned that he had been charged with stealing vaccine doses....
"Days later, a criminal court judge, Franklin Bynum, dismissed the case for lack of probable cause. 'In the number of words usually taken to describe an allegation of retail shoplifting, the State attempts, for the first time, to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses during a public health emergency,' he wrote. 'The Court emphatically rejects this attempted imposition of the criminal law on the professional decisions of a physician'....
"Dane Schiller, the district attorney’s director of communications, declined to answer questions about the case. He said in an email that when the matter is presented to a grand jury, 'representatives of the community can vote on whether an indictment is warranted.'"
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/houston-doctor-fired-covid-vaccine.html
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