Name: Philadelphia let ‘college kids’ distribute vaccines. The result was a ‘disaster,’ volunteers say.
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Philadelphia let ‘college kids’ distribute vaccines. The result was a ‘disaster,’ volunteers say.

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift SharePhiladelphia is home to some of the most venerated medical institutions in the country. Yet when it came time to set up the city’s first and largest coronavirus mass vaccination site, officials turned to the start-up Philly Fighting COVID, a with minimal health-care experience.Chaos ensued.Seniors were after finding that appointments they’d made through a bungled sign-up form wouldn’t be honored. The group switched to a for-profit model without publicizing the change and added a privacy policy that would allow it to . One volunteer alleged that the 22-year-old CEO had . Another described a where unsupervised 18- and 19-year-olds vaccinated one another and posed for photos.Now, the city has cut ties with Philly Fighting COVID, and prosecutors are looking into the AdvertisementThe group offered Tuesday while defending the switch to for-profit status, and CEO Andrei Doroshin told that claims he had helped himself to leftover vaccine doses were “baseless.”Just a few weeks ago, Philly Fighting COVID was receiving glowing coverage from the likes of The group had a compelling story: Doroshin, a at Drexel University, helped orchestrate an effort to use 3-D printers to make free face shields for hospital workers at the start of the pandemic. By summer, he and his friends were running their own pop-up testing sites citywide.But as reported, the group’s “executive team” lacked anyone with a medical degree or advanced degree in public health. Doroshin himself listed a résumé that included stints teaching a high school film class, producing videos of people longboarding and practicing parkour, and founding a nonprofit that, according to Philadelphia magazine, “mostly consisted of a meme-heavy Twitter account, some minor community lobbying, and a with a $50,000 goal that netted $684.”Speaking to “Today,” Doroshin said that his lack of a traditional public health background allowed him to “think a little differently” and speed up the vaccination process. In he expressed hopes of setting up a McDonald’s-like franchise and suggested that best practices for administering vaccine doses “can go out the window.”AdvertisementPhilly Fighting COVID’s young, entrepreneurial leaders also openly talked about the potential for profit, one former volunteer : “They were bragging about how rich they were going to get.” Another volunteer said the group’s executives “said they were gonna be millionaires” by billing insurance providers for administering vaccine doses that Philly Fighting COVID got free. (Doroshin has )The city’s partnership with the group began drawing scrutiny last week after reported that Philly Fighting COVID had abruptly backed out of plans to host coronavirus testing clinics in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods and “completely ghosted” community leaders, as one pastor put it. Then, on Saturday, dozens of seniors lined up for hours to be vaccinated at the Pennsylvania Convention Center because the group had accidentally allowed too many people to sign up.“There were literally 85-year-old, 90-year-old people standing there in tears, with printed appointment confirmations, saying: ‘I don’t understand why I can’t get vaccinated. I’m 85,’ ” one witness AdvertisementA registered nurse who volunteered with the group categorized it as a Katrina Lipinsky told the and that she wasn’t asked for her medical credentials before she began administering vaccine doses, and that plenty of unused doses were left over after seniors were turned away on Saturday. She alleged that she saw Doroshin place between 10 and 15 of those doses in his bag and take them with him when he left.The 22-year-old CEO attended a small gathering with friends that night, and a photo that circulated on Snapchat appeared to show him “getting ready to administer an unspecified syringe” to an individual in a private home.Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said that the allegations were “very disturbing” if true, and that any leftover vaccine doses should have been returned to the city. He also said that “in retrospect” it was a mistake to partner with the group.AdvertisementThe city on Monday that it would no longer work with Philly Fighting COVID for coronavirus testing or vaccine distribution, a day before the allegations of mishandled vaccine doses surfaced. The decision to sever ties was made after health officials became aware that the group had switched to for-profit status, Farley said Tuesday.Farley also cited concerns about the group’s privacy policy, which were first raised by he Inquirer. For weeks, Philly Fighting COVID collected data from tens of thousands of Philadelphians seeking vaccine appointments without telling them how that information could be used. When a privacy policy finally appeared on the group’s website last week, it contained provisions that would allow Philly Fighting COVID to sell users’ personal data to a third party.In a Tuesday Doroshin called the inclusion of that language a “mistake” and said it had been removed. “We never have and never would sell, share, or disseminate any data we collected as it would be in violation of HIPAA rules,” he wrote.AdvertisementDoroshin also apologized for “any miscommunications” as Philly Fighting COVID switched its focus from testing to vaccines, and said that he never intended to “cause confusion or harm.” The group lacked the resources to handle both testing and vaccinations at the same time, he said, adding that becoming a for-profit company was necessary for “scaling up.”But elected officials still have questions. On Tuesday, (D) asked anyone with knowledge of potential criminal activity to contact his office, while (D) invited Philadelphians who felt they had been misled by Philly Fighting COVID to open a complaint. Multiple city council members have called for an investigation, , and want to know why inexperienced college students were placed in charge of such a crucial task in the first place.Notably, everyone on Philly Fighting COVID’s executive team is White, reported — a fact that has raised eyebrows in a city that has struggled to vaccinate its substantial Black population, (Philadelphia is roughly 44 percent Black, but only 12 percent of vaccine doses have gone to Black people so far.) The city is also home to the , which pioneered one of the earliest efforts to conduct coronavirus testing in communities disproportionately affected by the virus.“If there was anybody poised and ready to do this, it was us,” founder Ala Stanford told the magazine, adding that the city had suggested she team up with Philly Fighting COVID to administer vaccine shots. “I happen to have been a doctor for 23 years, longer than some of these kids have been living, but I need these white kids to teach me how to do it?” CommentsGift ArticleTOP STORIESGoing GlobalEssential reporting and analysis from correspondents around the world.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift SharePhiladelphia is home to some of the most venerated medical institutions in the country. Yet when it came time to set up the city’s first and largest coronavirus mass vaccination site, officials turned to the start-up Philly Fighting COVID, a with minimal health-care experience.Chaos ensued.Seniors were after finding that appointments they’d made through a bungled sign-up form wouldn’t be honored. The group switched to a for-profit model without publicizing the change and added a privacy policy that would allow it to . One...

Philadelphia let ‘college kids’ distribute vaccines. The result was a ‘disaster,’ volunteers say.

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