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The start-up organization, founded by a 22-year-old Drexel student, ran the city’s first COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic. But after the organization changed its data privacy practices, the city cut ties.
Photograph by Flavio Coelho / Getty Images
The city’s health department is immediately severing its partnership with Philly Fighting COVID, spokesman Jim Garrow said in a statement Monday evening.
The group, which was founded at the start of the pandemic by Andrei Doroshin, a 22-year-old Drexel student, had been selected by the city to run the first mass vaccination clinic at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where nurses administered doses of vaccine to nearly 7,000 health workers in the city’s priority group 1A.
But, Garrow said in an email, the health department recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID has quietly changed its status from a nonprofit to a profit, as WHYY first reported. In addition, the group had set up a website where people could submit personal information, including their name, age, address and medical conditions, and register their interest in receiving the vaccine.
The site was designed to look official; it included a city council seal, even though the council had nothing to do with the site and the city did not have access to the data Philadelphians submitted to it. Now, Garrow said, the city has recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID “has updated its data privacy policy in a way that could allow the organization to sell the data collected through the pre-registration site of PFC.
Reached by phone, Doroshin said he personally informed the health department of his group’s change to for-profit status and did so to facilitate fundraising and keep the clinics running. He also claimed that the privacy policy that appears on the Philly Fighting COVID vaccination interest page is not actually that of his organization; instead, he says, it’s the privacy policy of the company that manages the database. “We don’t actually own the data,” Doroshin said. “It amazes me that people think we would sell data or do something crazy like that.” He added, “I’m about to cry right now. … We just want to help people.
Garrow said the city was not aware of any attempts to sell user data collected on the website. But, he added, “because of these concerns, as well as the unexpected shutdown of PFC testing operations, the Department of Health has decided to stop providing vaccines to PFC.”
The health department has the names and contact details of all people who have received a first dose of PFC vaccine. Garrow said the city will contact everyone to schedule a second dose at a non-PFC clinic.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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