PHARMACIST STEVE

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — With the increase of cases of Hepatitis-A, more people are getting vaccinated, but one Charleston family found out the vaccine they got Thursday was the wrong dose.

“As of right now, we have not received a call from CVS pharmacy,” Whitney Raines of Charleston said.

“She contacted my sister from her personal cell phone around 10 p.m. to tell her what had happened,” Raines said.

The CVS pharmacist told Raines’ sister that they were given the child dose of .5 ml and need to be given the other half. The adult vaccine is 1 ml. They had three days to get the rest of it. If they didn’t receive that other half the vaccine would not work. But Raine said he and his brother in law never got a call.

Raines went back to the CVS the Friday morning, but says the pharmacy manager didn’t seem concerned.

“This was a new shot and they weren’t sure what they ordered and she in turn, blamed it on CVS for ordering the wrong shots,” Raines said reciting what the Pharmacy manager told him.

Raines said he’s concerned they were not the only three impacted and feels lucky his sister was able to tell him about the mistake but says calls should be made to all the individual patients.

“I don’t know how many people have gone through there to get the vaccination but I believe the lady just called out of pure kindness and I am sure there are people that didn’t hear of it and it is very concerning,” explained Raines.

We reached out to CVS Pharmacy and spokesperson Mike DeAngelis tells us that Raines, his sister and brother in law were the only ones impacted. He adds a full investigation on how the error occurred is being conducted and that the correct procedure was followed by reaching out to the patients impacted.

Here is a full statement from CVS:

CVS Pharmacy has stringent processes that our pharmacists follow for administering immunizations. On Thursday, April 19, three adult patients who visited the Charleston CVS Pharmacy at the same time to receive Hepatitis A vaccinations were inadvertently administered the infant dose of the vaccine. As soon as our pharmacist realized this error occurred, she followed correct procedure and contacted all three patients to apologize and make arrangements for them to be re-vaccinated. These three individuals are the only patients who were administered the incorrect dose. We are conducting a full investigation into how this error occurred. CVS sincerely apologizes to the three patients and a member of our management team will be following up with each one of them.

Also, it appears there was a misunderstanding that occurred during our pharmacist’s phone call. It was not her intent to suggest that the patients couldn’t ever be vaccinated if they weren’t re-vaccinated today.