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PHILADELPHIA (AP) – When Philadelphia began receiving its first batches of COVID-19 vaccines, it sought to partner with someone who could set up a mass vaccination site quickly.
City hall officials may have looked across the horizon at world-class health providers from the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, or Jefferson Health.
Instead, they picked a 22-year-old graduate psychology student with a few failing startups on his resume. And last week, amid concerns about his qualifications and the for-profit status of Philly Fighting COVID, the city shut down operations at the downtown convention center.
“Where were all the people with titles? Why did a child have to come and help the city? Said student Andrei Doroshin in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I am a scary graduate student. But you know what? We did the job. We have vaccinated 7,000 people, ”said the Drexel University student. “It was we who were doing our part in this time of madness.”
City officials said they gave him the task because he and his friends organized one of the community groups that set up COVID-19 testing sites throughout the city last year. But they shut down the vaccination operation once they learned that Doroshin had changed his privacy notice to potentially sell patient data, a development he calls a problem he quickly corrected.
It is not known when the city will find a new site operator.
“They were doing a pretty good job administering the vaccinations. They apparently decided they were going to monetize some of this information, which was wrong, and we ended our relationship with them, ”Mayor Jim Kenney said at a press conference on Tuesday, citing the work of local news outlets to raise concerns. “And this is the end of them.”
Doroshin also admitted that he took home four doses of the Pfizer vaccine and gave them to friends, despite not being a nurse or licensed health care practitioner. He said he only did it after exhausting other options. There were 100 more doses set to expire that night, and the site was only able to round up 96 eligible beneficiaries, he said.
“They had to fit into an arm or be thrown,” said Doroshin, who said he had previously given intramuscular injections. “I felt good ethically. … There is nothing that I have done that is illegal.
National and local prosecutors are now considering the matter.
Many believe the situation speaks for a larger point about the health care system, in Philadelphia and across the country.
Public health budgets had been hit hard before the pandemic, leaving local and state governments ill-equipped to roll out a mass vaccination program. This left them on the hunt for COVID-19 partners.
“I think there is a place in our healthcare system for our innovative partners,” said Julia Lynch, a health policy expert who teaches at Penn. “But maybe now is not the time to experiment with disruptors?” Perhaps this is the time when we should turn to a health service delivery infrastructure that functions like a well-oiled machine? ”
She is also distressed that city data shows that only 12% of the city’s vaccinations have gone to black residents, who make up 42% of the city’s population. She, like others, was hoping the job could have been given to a more established group such as the Black Doctors Consortium, which tested and vaccinated people in low-income areas of the city last year.
Lucinda Ayers, 74, had jumped at the chance to book a date Feb.12 on Doroshin’s website at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and wondered if the city shouldn’t have helped her come into compliance. .
“They were vaccinating people. I’m on the fence, ”said Ayers, who hasn’t had a chance to find another date despite spending hours online. “There is so much lack of clarity about what information is coming out.”
Doroshin, while working on his graduate degree, went from the COVID-19 testing operation to working on vaccines when he heard about the city’s needs. He said he borrowed $ 250,000 from a family friend for start-up costs, and that the city – by nothing more than a verbal agreement – gave him a cut back on his vaccine supply, the priority absolute being the healthcare workers.
He said he had agreed to pay $ 1 million to rent the convention center for six months and expected to charge the city $ 500,000 per month once it was fully operational. He hired around 30 people, although at least some of the doctors, nurses and nursing students doing the injections are volunteers, he said.
“I was going to take a salary,” he says. “In a perfect world, I wanted to vaccinate Philly in six months, then apply for my doctorate.”
Dr Thomas Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said this week that the group had a good history of testing, so “we decided to give them the option to run mass clinics, and the first mass clinic went very well.
For now, the city is committed to ensuring that people who have received their first vaccines there can get vaccinated.
“It certainly shows why we need a real public health system,” said Helen Gym, a board member, who noted that two private hospitals in the city have closed since 2019, while the city remains one. of the rare large American cities without a public hospital. .
She called the failed vaccine deployment a “glaring and profound failure.”
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Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale
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