Another Walgreens has been caught giving an adult dosage of the COVID-19 vaccine to a child, this time a 5-year-old boy in Florida.
The mother of the boy, Erin Slutak, said that the worker claimed that they messed up because they were focusing on her son’s allergies.
“He was more concerned that my son has allergies and he was worried about that as opposed to giving him the proper vaccine,” Slutak said.
A similar situation happened at a Maryland Walgreens in September, when a pharmacist mistakenly gave a four-year-old girl the COVID vaccine instead of a flu shot.
The child, Colette Olivier, was injected with the adult dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It is currently only approved for children who are at least 12-years-old.
Victoria Olivier, the girl’s mother, told the Baltimore Sun that it was a “record scratch” moment that has left her with dire fears about her daughter’s health.
“All of us were just stunned,” Olivier said. “No one really knew what to do, of course.”
The child currently appears to be doing well, the paper reported.
This week, 112 children in Loudon County were also given adult doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
The Virginia Department of Health confirmed on Friday that the young children were given doses approved for people 12 or older — not the one for children 5 through 11-years-old.
“Because they did not have the children’s formulation they used the adult formulation but only gave a third of the amount to the children,” said David Goodfriend, director of the Loudoun County Health Department in a statement obtained by the Washington Post. “Our understanding from Ted Pharmacy is they were trying to do a workaround, which is not authorized.”
Goodfriend explained that the children likely either received too much or too little of the vaccine solution.
Last month, parents of 4 and 5-yr-old siblings took them to an Indiana Walgreens to get a flu shot. Instead, both children were accidentally given adult doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccination.
The children were taken to a pediatric cardiologist and the family was told that both were showing signs of heart issues.
“[The cardiologist] said our daughter was having higher blood pressure than she would like,” the mother said. “And Lucas, our son was having tachycardia…”
