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According to state records, Andrei Doroshin, the group’s 22-year-old CEO, started a company in December called Vax Populi Inc. – a riff of the Latin phrase vox populi, which means “voice of the people.” . The incorporation filing was dated December 9. Garrow said WHY the city had no knowledge of PFC’s profit aspirations at the time.
In several interviews, Doroshin, a graduate student in neuroscience at Drexel, repeatedly declined to say who was investing in the operation.
“If this is our funding and our funding is providing a service to the city at a loss, which is the case now, what do you care?” Doroshin said.
The city’s decision to stop working with PFC was based on the group’s updated privacy policy, Garrow said, which “could allow the organization to sell data collected through PFC’s pre-registration site.” – although the city said it had no evidence that data was sold.
“[F]or PFC to have made these changes without discussion with the City is extremely troubling, ”he said.
The pre-registration site became a source of unrest last week, after WHYY reported that the city and the startup were not working in tandem on the early registration page, as they had originally announced. A few days later, the city launched its own COVID registration site. The health department said it will work to consolidate information from all existing listings, including those managed by the Black Doctors COVID-19 consortium and Acme Markets.
After months of unprofitable city-funded testing operations, the backbone of a mass vaccination program presented a huge potential windfall for the organization.
And money would have been an open topic within the team.
Five former PFC volunteers and staff, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Doroshin and other leaders have spoken openly about benefiting from the vaccine in recent months.
“They weren’t even bragging about how they were helping the community,” said a former volunteer. “They were bragging about the wealth they were going to become.”
Doroshin did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Monday.
In recent interviews, the young CEO has said he’s looking to turn the COVID-19 vaccination program into a McDonald’s-type franchise that he can sell from town to town.
In a previous interview with WHYY, Philly Fighting COVID officials argued that a for-profit entity was needed to bill insurance companies for vaccine reimbursements, a claim that was simply false in a city with many healthcare providers. health nonprofit. In a separate interview last week, Doroshin said the group needed the status to significantly expand vaccination sites without the financial restrictions of a nonprofit.
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