42 people in West Virginia mistakenly received virus treatment instead of vaccine

Forty-two people in Boone County, southwestern West Virginia, who were due to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday were mistakenly injected with an experimental monoclonal antibody treatment instead, said Thursday the West Virginia National Guard.

None of the 42 recipients have developed side effects so far, the guard said in a statement. The Guard, which leads the state’s vaccine distribution effort, called the mistake a “break in the process.”

The experimental treatment, a cocktail of antibodies made by Regeneron, is the same one President Trump received when he was hospitalized with Covid-19 in November. It is intended to be administered by intravenous infusion and not by direct injection like the vaccine.

Major General James Hoyer, the adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard, said the confusion apparently occurred during the delivery of a shipment of the Regeneron cocktail to a distribution center, where the vials were placed among the Moderna vaccine supplies. Workers at the center then apparently included the treatment vials in a vaccine shipment to Boone County.

General Hoyer attributed the situation to “some human error” and said the guard acted quickly as soon as they realized what had happened. “We have found a problem, we solve it and we are moving forward” he said in a radio interview Thursday.

No other vaccine shipments were affected, the guard said in a statement.

The vials for the treatment and the vaccine look somewhat alike, but are clearly labeled, as are the boxes that contain them. Both are kept in the refrigerator before use.

The blunder came at a time when a record number of hospitalizations across the country signaled a greater need than ever for antibody treatments, which are scarce and expensive, even as some supplies go unused in refrigerators across the country.

West Virginia officials on Thursday reported 1,109 new cases of the coronavirus and 20 new deaths. There have been at least 85,334 cases and 1,338 deaths in the state since the start of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.