The Doctor Who Got Fired For Using Left-over Vaccine*
The Georgia doctor looked at the clock ticking loudly on the wall in his office, with a staccato, steady beat. Twenty minutes past 5 p.m. He had six hours.
Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened for his last patient on this blustery February day, he had to find ten eligible people for its remaining doses before the valuable medicine—more precious than liquid gold, he’d been told—expired. In six hours.
Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his office outside Savannah. Some were acquaintances; others strangers. A bed-ridden octogenarian woman. A mother with a special-needs child who used a ventilator. A man in his 80s with dementia.