Texas doctor accused of stealing 9 doses of COVID-19 vaccine ‘for friends and family’

• A Texas doctor has been fired and charged after being accused of stealing a vial of the COVID-19 vaccine.

• The district attorney said the vial contained nine doses of the vaccine.

• Gokal’s attorney told CNN the vile had to expire and would have been wasted.

• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

A Texas doctor is facing charges he stole nine doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from his workplace.

Dr Hasan Gokal stole the single vial on Dec. 29 while working at the vaccination site in Humble County, Texas, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Hasan was fired and then charged with criminal charges, after telling a fellow public health worker who reported it to his superiors, according to the prosecutor’s office.

“He abused his position to place his friends and family in front of people who had gone through the legal process to be there,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “What he did was illegal and he will be held accountable under the law.”

The local health department said, via the prosecutor’s office, that mismanagement of the vaccine could result in a loss of government funding for the county.

Read more: What to expect after a COVID-19 vaccine, how long the side effects last until the protection takes effect

“Gokal did not follow the county protocols in place to ensure that the vaccine is not wasted but given to vulnerable populations and frontline workers on a waiting list,” the office statement said.

Gokal’s attorney, Paul Doyle, told CNN his client only took doses that had to expire and would be falsely unused.

Doyle told CNN his client was “a dedicated public servant who ensured that doses of COVID-19 vaccine that would otherwise have expired were in the arms of people who met the criteria to receive it.”

“Harris County would have preferred Dr. Gokal to let the vaccines go to waste and attempt to denigrate this man’s reputation in the process of supporting this policy,” Doyle’s statement continued.

If convicted of the alleged theft, a misdemeanor, Gokal faces up to a year in prison and a fine of $ 4,000.

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