Two women were asked to show a ticket for social security at pharmacies in California.
Pharmacy retail giant Rite Aid has apologized to two undocumented immigrants who, according to the company, were “wrongly” denied COVID-19 vaccinations at stores in Southern California.
Both women, who were rejected from the vaccine in separate incidents this month, were invited back by Rite Aid to receive their vaccinations, a spokeswoman for the pharmacy chain told ABC News on Sunday.
Christopher Savarese, spokesman for Rite Aid, described both cases as ‘isolated’ incidents due to shop workers not being eligible for vaccination according to the prescribed protocols. The employees will be followed up anew on the protocols to make sure everyone is on the same page, he said.
Savarese said that of the hundreds of thousands of vaccines Rite Aid has administered, these are the only two complaints the chain is aware of.
In a statement sent to ABC News later, Rite Aid officials said: “In such an unprecedented deployment, there are going to be mistakes and there will always be areas that can improve suppliers – we are looking for those opportunities every day.”
Savarese added: “It is very important to us that this is rectified. Both the situations we are talking about have been resolved, and both people will get their vaccine at Rite Aid.”
Rite Aid issued the apologies after a son of one of the women and the employer of the other woman, who is a babysitter, spoke to ABC Los Angeles station KABC.
Sebastian Araujo, a UCLA student planning to become an immigration attorney, said his mother was turned down by a Rite Aid in Mission Hills, California, after being asked for a social security ticket show certainty and can only show her foreign consular identification.
Araujo told KABC that he had spoken on behalf of his mother with the aim of ensuring that all undocumented immigrants in the United States are allowed to receive the vaccine when they are eligible according to state, local and federal guidelines.
“I know my mother is not the only one,” Araujo said.
Kevin Rager of Orange County told KABC that his babysitter, an immigrant without papers, was reduced to tears when she was rejected twice at a Rite Aid store the same day.
Rager said his employee even provided Rite Aid with an out-of-state identification and a letter he wrote to confirm that she was looking after his children. But the pharmacist at a Rite Aid in Laguna Niguel, according to Rager, insisted on seeing the woman’s social security card and wrongly informed her that U.S. citizens had a preference for vaccination.
“These questions should not be asked to any individual, and our whole country should be vaccinated. So I can not see why anyone should be denied if they actually want to get a vaccine,” Rager said.
Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who represents Los Angeles, said the legal immigration status of a person would not interfere with that.
“It’s not a requirement at all at federal, state or local level, and the organization (Rite Aid) was told very clearly that it was wrong, and they immediately apologized for doing so, but it left the woman very upset, “Cárdenas told KABC of Rager’s employee.
On February 1, the federal Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying the agency and its “partners of the federal government fully support equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines and the distribution of vaccines to undocumented immigrants.”
“It is essential for moral and public health to ensure that all individuals living in the United States have access to the vaccine. DHS encourages all individuals, regardless of immigration status, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available. according to local distribution guidelines, “reads the DHS statement.
However, the confusion over whether immigrants without documents are eligible to receive vaccination has occurred not only in Southern California, but also elsewhere in the country. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley apology issued to at least 14 people who were rejected at the vaccination site on Feb. 20 for failing to provide proof of their U.S. residency.