Pharmacist tampered with COVID-19 vaccine two nights in a row

The Wisconsin hospital worker accused of wasting hundreds of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine did not tamper with the vials once – he left them unrefrigerated twice, according to his boss.

Steven Brandenburg, 46, is being held in jail on three counts – reckless endangering security, adulteration of a prescription drug and criminal damage to property – although police have not officially identified him as the alleged culprit, the Daily Mail reported.

Ozaukee County Jail records show Brandenburg was booked for New Years Eve, the same day cops arrested the culprit and state records show he is a licensed pharmacist.

Police and federal authorities – the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration – are investigating the tampering at the Advocate Aurora Health Hospital in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee.

The culprit had left 57 vials at room temperature not one night as first suspected, but two – on December 24 and 25, Dr Jeff Bahr told reporters in a Zoom briefing Thursday.

The culprit put the vials back on ice after the first night, then returned to perform the same trick on a second night, Bahr told reporters.

A pharmacy technician found the vials on a counter on the morning of December 26 and returned them to the refrigerator. Later that day, 57 people were vaccinated at Aurora Medical Center Grafton because the hospital was unaware the vials had been left out for two nights. The vaccine, according to manufacturer Moderna, can be stored at room temperature for up to 12 hours.

Those vaccinated have been notified, Bahr said; hospital workers threw away the rest of the vials.

“There is no evidence that the vaccines have caused them any harm other than being potentially less effective or ineffective,” he said.

The employee responsible for leaving the vials outside told hospital officials the decision was an “inadvertent mistake,” made during the process of removing another medicine from the refrigerator, Bahr said.

But hospital officials became “increasingly suspicious” of the employee after an internal review, he said. They interrogated the worker several times before he finally admitted to tampering with the vials.

The employee has not explained his actions and the police do not yet have a motive for the crimes.

Bahr assured the public that there was no evidence that the vaccine had been tampered with in any other way.

“It was a situation involving a bad actor as opposed to a bad process,” he said.