💡 Get Philly smart 💡
with BP’s free daily newsletter
Read the news of the day in less than 10 minutes — not that we’re counting.
💌 Love Philly? Sign up for the free Billy Penn email newsletter to get everything you need to know about Philadelphia, every day.
Philadelphia’s inspector general has opened an investigation into how Philly Fighting COVID ended up operating the city’s first mass vaccination clinic at the Pa. Convention Center. The group, a startup run by 22-year-old Drexel student Andrei Doroshin, has since been kicked out of the program.
On top of privacy concerns regarding PFC’s sign-up registry — which the city first endorsed and then distanced itself from — there were other issues with the program, which operated for three weekends without a written contract (ostensibly because officials wanted to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible). Some people who volunteered at the clinic reported a lack of supervision and unprofessional attitudes from Doroshin and his colleagues.
During the clinic’s last day, a line of older Philadelphians who thought they had appointments were left stranded in line outside the Convention Center. Somehow, there were doses left over at the end of the day — and so, Doroshin admitted, he took some vaccine with him when he left.
Yes, there’s been a serious dearth of organization at the federal level, but how did a student make it this far and get endorsements from the city? It’s enough to make you question the competency of Philly’s leadership overall.
