The doctor was desperate to use up the COVID vaccine doses before they expired. Then he was accused of stealing them.
Shortly before 7:00 pm on December 29, a nurse at Dr. Hasan Gokal's county vaccination clinic injected the first dose from a new vial of the Moderna into the arm of the last patient of the day.
Moderna packs 11 doses into each vial, and from the moment the vial was punctured, there were only six hours to use the remaining doses. Dr. Gokal started by asking people who were still around the clinic. He then called a Harris County public health official to report his plans to find 10 people to receive the remaining doses. He was told, simply: OK.
Then, unable to reach anyone else from the county, he started calling the names in his own contact list. Dr. Gokal spent the next hours desperately searching for people who needed the vaccine, making house calls to give the vaccine, and vaccinating others whom he had directed to go to his own house. Every one of the people he gave the doses to was either in the approved categories or at high risk in some other way.
At midnight, just before the vaccine expired, he injected the last dose into his wife's arm. She has pulmonary sarcoidosis.
That was December 29. After he filed the paperwork saying where the doses went, he was summarily fired AND later charged with stealing the doses.
Why? The doctor, a childhood immigrant from Pakistan, had filed paperwork with too many Indian names, an official admitted. It was a matter of "equity." This is what Dr. Gokal told The New York Times.
A judge later dismissed the charges, but Dr. Gokal is still twisting in the wind. He didn't know he'd been charged with stealing the vaccines until newspeople literally showed up on his doorstep.
He and his family have been besieged by newspeople, opinions from anyone and everywhere, and phone calls, mostly of support. He is working only as a volunteer, and he doesn't know what will happen next.
Is he a villain, or is he a hero? Is he a victim of straight-up racism? Do you think that anyone at the county level will stand up for him, in public or at all? What would you advise him to do next?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/houston-doctor-fired-covid-vaccine.html?fbclid=IwAR3lHfufyxLR9rZgzrkcnTwpv1gTEBPG6hRqvWsfAxXgRyx1oxczkno4JDo
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