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The startup organization, founded by a 22-year-old Drexel student, ran the city’s first COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic. But after the organization changed its privacy practices, the city cut ties.
Photo by Flavio Coelho / Getty Images
The city health department immediately severed its vaccine partnership with Philly Fighting COVID, spokesman Jim Garrow said in a statement Monday night.
The group, founded during the early part of the pandemic by 22-year-old Drexel student Andrei Doroshin, was chosen by the city to run the first mass vaccination clinic in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where nurses administered the vaccine doses. nearly 7,000 health workers in the city’s 1A priority group.
But, Garrow said in an email, the health department recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID has been quietly changing its corporate status from non-profit to profitable, as first reported by WHYY. In addition, the group set up a website where people could submit personal information, including their name, age, address and medical conditions, and register their interest in receiving the vaccine.
The website has been officially made; it included a city council seal, although the council had nothing to do with the site and the city did not have access to the data submitted by the Philadelphians there. Now, Garrow said, the city recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID “has updated its data privacy policy in a way that enables the organization to sell data collected through PFC’s pre-registration website.”
Doroshin, who was reached by telephone, said he had personally notified the health department of the change of his group to profit motive and that he had done so to facilitate fundraising and continue the clinics. He also claims that the privacy policy that appears on the Philly Fighting COVID page for vaccination is not actually his organization; instead, he said, it is the privacy policy for the company that manages the database. “We do not actually own the data,” Doroshin said. “It blew me away that people thought we would sell data or do something crazy like that.” He added: ‘I’m about to cry now. … We just want to help people. ”
Garrow said the city is not aware of any attempts to sell user data collected on the site. But, he added, “because of these concerns, coupled with PFC’s unexpected cessation of testing, the health department decided to stop supplying the vaccine to PFC.”
The health department has the names and contact information for anyone who has received a first dose of PFC vaccine. Garrow said the city will contact each person to plan a second dose in a non-PFC clinic.
This is an evolving story and will be updated.
