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Dr Hasan Gokal went door to door administering vaccines that were about to expire in December.
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Local authorities in Houston charged him with theft and a grand jury acquitted him last month.
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Gokal told Insider and the door-to-door approach would not work to increase vaccination rates now.
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See more stories on the Insider business page.
A Texas doctor who has been accused of stealing doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and acquitted by a grand jury said increasing vaccination rates must be a local effort.
Dr Hasan Gokal told Insider he was relieved a judge dismissed the charges against him late last month.
Gokal was working with Harris County Public Health on a vaccination site in December when he went door-to-door to find eligible people, including his wife, to donate the remaining doses from a vial of Moderna about to be released. ‘expire. As a result, District Attorney Kim Ogg brought charges of theft against Gokal.
“I couldn’t be more grateful… and finally, it’s that feeling of relief, that feeling of closure and not having to constantly worry about the prospect of having to go back to court and this thing that dawns. another day, “Gokal told Insider. “Finally, it’s over.”
In March, the Texas Medical Board also dismissed the cases against Gokal and he has since returned to part-time work in the emergency department of the Methodist Hospital Network.
He told Insider the case meant he was too stressed and exhausted to be able to devote his attention to patients full time.
“I felt that if I did a few shifts, that would be where I could give them the most time, my effort without the feeling of burnout in some way, or on the contrary being less than a good doctor, this that I would never want to do, “he said.
Gokal told Insider he is seeing increased hospital cases of COVID-19 and has noticed that those who are not vaccinated tend to come up with worse illness than those who are vaccinated.
He said getting more people vaccinated must be an effort by trusted local entities.
President Joe Biden had previously suggested taking a door-to-door approach to getting people vaccinated.
“We have to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and often, door to door – literally knocking on doors – to get help for those remaining protected from the virus,” Biden said at a press briefing.
When vaccines were first launched, priority was given to people who were older or had underlying conditions, who usually already had a relationship with their doctor.
And when the doctor said, ‘Hey, you really should get it. They trusted them and did as they were told, “Gokal said.
Those who currently have the lowest vaccination rates are generally young and healthy, Gokal said.
Gokal, who has been going door-to-door to distribute the remaining vaccine doses before they expire, said it would not work with this group that needs accurate information the most, as younger people cannot. -be not this established relationship with doctors, and therefore local entities must meet them in places like religious institutions where trust is already established.
The Biden administration is also working to equip local medical experts and professionals with the resources to get their communities immunized, as opposed to a larger national campaign.
Gokal said there are many different reasons a person may not want to be vaccinated and feelings and experience vary in different parts of the country. A local approach would therefore make it possible to meet the communities where they are located and to respond specifically to their concerns and anxieties.
However, he still fears that by the time the vaccination rate increases, the virus would have had enough time to mutate again. The low vaccination rate could lead to more transmissible variants than the sharply increasing Delta, which could still elude vaccination.
“If people are not immune and continue to pass it on and have a reservoir of people that this thing keeps growing, mutating and mutating in, it will find a way to mutate into a worse variant that will come and infect people. who were otherwise already immune during the resurgence, “Gokal said.” So this resurgence is definitely a possibility and can be made worse by people refusing to be vaccinated and killing it all at once. “
Read the original article on Business Insider
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