According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, pharmacists should not collect excess Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from multiple vials. If the amount of vaccine left over in a vial is not enough to give a full dose, it is to be discarded.
The small amount of vaccine remaining does not contain preservatives, which means pooling doses can lead to contamination, according to the state health department.
Memorial Health System notified the Illinois Department of Public Health about the incident, and the state health department contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how the hospital should respond.
The CDC recommended that the hospital notify people who may have received the pooled doses and educate them about signs and symptoms of injection site infections, though infection was of minimal concern because a month had passed since the incident.
The CDC said those that may have received pooled doses would not need to get their first doses again, as long as they received the correct size dose the first time, according to an email from the Illinois Department of Public Health’s general counsel to the hospital system’s general counsel. Those people could still receive their second doses on time, the CDC said, according to the emails.
The hospital system reported the incidents to the local health department, the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which regulates pharmacists’ licenses.
The hospital system did not issue a news release or statement about the incidents at the time, with Evans saying in a January email to the state health department that “the public was not impacted so it is our opinion this is not needed.”
Generally, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation can take action against a pharmacist’s license including probation, suspension or revocation, said Garth Reynolds, executive director of the Illinois Pharmacists Association.