Monroe woman accidentally given saline instead of COVID-19 vaccine :: WRAL.com

By CNN Newsource

Monroe, N.C. — Lisa Strawn has plenty of questions after she said she and her husband walked into the Walgreens on Fincher Street in Monroe on March 20 and got what they thought was the Pfizer vaccine.

“About 5:30 they called us and told us we needed to come back the next day, that there had been a mix-up with our shot,” she said. “You question how could that even happen?”

Strawn was told the pharmacist had forgotten to mix the vaccine and they had only gotten a saline shot.

“My question was, ‘Well what if we had got the straight Pfizer, you know, without it being diluted?’ And I never really got an answer out of that,” she said.

It’s still unclear how many people got the wrong injection.

“There were several people they were having to call because there was like a big stack of papers there,” Strawn said. “And I asked the guy, I said, ‘How did you figure out that we only got saline?'”

Strawn said the employee she talked to said there was too much vaccine left over at the end of the day, and that’s when they realized something was done incorrectly.

In a statement, Walgreens said it contacted people who are affected and rescheduled their dose, adding, “We are investigating what happened and have taken immediate steps to review our procedures with the location to prevent this from occurring again.”

“I just thought it was important that people know, just be careful,” Strawn said. “You know, check behind them.”