It Happened Again: Walgreens Gives 5-Year-Old Child Adult Dose of COVID Vaccine
How many times does a vaccine mishap have to happen before it’s no longer an outlier?
I ask because, for at least the third time since COVID-19 vaccines became available for young children, a major screwup has made the local news. And yet it’s stayed local.
The establishment media doesn’t like reporting these mishaps. For conservative media, covering these cases is akin to stepping on a landmine as Big Tech giants try to demonetize and suppress articles like this one and starve right-leaning outlets. (It’s worth noting that The Western Journal is fighting back — and you can help by subscribing here.)
Yet for Erin Slutak in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the fear is real.
According to WPLG-TV, Slutak’s 5-year-old son Landon was given an adult dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
As WPLG noted, the vials are color-coordinated — “a purple cap if the dose is for adults and an orange cap if it’s for kids.”
When Slutak took Landon to get the shot at a Walgreens on Tuesday, he was given the wrong dose.
“I have no clue how this even happens,” Slutak said. “Before he gave him the shot, I asked him, ‘Is this the child’s vaccine?’ and he assured me that it was.”
After her son had been inoculated, however, she was told he’d been accidentally given the adult dose.
“I didn’t know what to do. Do I take him to the ER?” Slutak said.
Slutak still says she would get her child vaccinated again, but she urged parents to pay close attention to the shots their children are given.
That’s sound advice, considering this isn’t the first time this has happened.
In Garland, Texas, a 6- and 7-year old were given adult doses of the vaccine on Oct. 31.
Julian Gonzalez, the father of the 6-year-old, said his son suffered some side effects, although the mother of the 7-year-old said her son was fine.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, meanwhile, a pharmacy gave 112 kids under the age of 12 an incorrect dosage.
When Dasha Hermosilla’s 7-year-old daughter was given a vaccine with a purple cap, the pharmacist told her it was allowed. All it took was a quick Google search for Hermosilla to discover that it wasn’t.
“Nothing says that you can change a purple to an orange,” Hermosilla said. “I had this pit in my stomach that, like, what did they just do to my daughter?”
She also lambasted the pharmacy for how it dealt with the parents who were involved.
“The way they have dealt with individuals is really, like, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal,’” Hermosilla said. “There are dozens and dozens of families out there that don’t even know that this is an issue.”
This isn’t the first mishap for Walgreens, either.
In September, a 4-year-old girl was supposed to get a flu shot at a Walgreens in Baltimore but ended up getting an adult dose of the COVID-19 vaccine instead. The same thing happened to two young children in Indiana.
“Events like this are extremely rare and we take this matter very seriously,” a Walgreens spokesman said after the mix-up in Baltimore.
“We are in touch with the patient’s family and we have apologized. Our multi-step vaccination procedure includes several safety checks to minimize the chance of human error. We’ve recently reviewed this process with our pharmacy staff in order to prevent a future occurrence.”
They may have been rare then. They’re not now.
Thankfully, none of these incidents has led to a serious adverse reaction. One can only hope it stays that way.
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