An American vaccine-skeptic pharmacist has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to knowingly spoiling hundreds of doses of the vaccine against the coronavirus, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday (June 8).
Read also: United States: fear of contamination at work persists despite vaccines
According to a ministry statement, Steven Brandenburg, 46, "
deliberately removed
" vials of Moderna vaccine from their refrigerator at the hospital where he worked in Wisconsin (North). The pharmacist was also ordered to pay 83,800 dollars (68,800 euros) in compensation to the hospital. He had removed a box of vials from two night shifts in December and left them out of the refrigerator for several hours before putting them back in for administration the next day.
A total of 57 people had received doses of deteriorated vaccine, according to the statement. "
Deliberately attempting to spoil vaccine doses during a national health emergency is a serious offense
," said Brian Boynton, acting deputy attorney general in the ministry's civil affairs division. Steven Brandenburg, who admitted to being a conspirator, believed the Covid-19 vaccine was dangerous for people and could harm them and alter their DNA.
The vaccine from the American laboratory Moderna, like the American-German Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, is based on the use of messenger RNA, a new method for teaching the immune system to fight a virus. Over 124 million doses of Moderna vaccine have been administered in the United States.
