Teacher arrested after giving 17-year-old boy vaccine at her home
A 54-year-old teacher has been arrested for allegedly vaccinating a student against Covid-19 in her home.
Laura Russo, from Nassau County in the US state of New York, was arrested at her home on New Year’s Eve after she allegedly gave the 17-year-old boy a vaccine, The New York Post reported.
Russo is not authorised to give vaccines and did not have the consent of the teen’s parents.
Video obtained by NBC 4 shows Russo giving the boy a vaccine at a dinner table.
Police said her son's friend had asked for the vaccine claiming his parents did not want him to have it. He told his mum when he got home and she called the police.
It is not known how Russo obtained the vaccination, reportedly a Johnson & Johnson dosage, police said.
Mount Sinai South Nassau's Dr Aaron Glatt told NBC 4 only trained health professionals should administer vaccines.
“There you go, at home vaccine”. Police have arrested a Long Island mother for illegally giving a 17 year old boy a shot of Covid vaccine in her home. And there’s video….Only on @NBCNewYork #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/KpG5vAQaDT
— Pei-Sze Cheng (@PeiSzeCheng4NY) January 3, 2022
The school district said Russo had been removed from classroom duties.
Russo was charged with unauthorised practice of a profession under New York State Education Law.
She is due in court on January 21.
US reaches one million cases in a single day
The US has recorded more than one million cases of coronavirus in a single day, according to John Hopkins University data.
It's a new global record that was reached on Monday.
However, some experts believe the focus should instead be on Covid-19 hospital admissions. And those aren’t climbing as fast.
Dr Anthony Fauci, for one, said Sunday on ABC that with many infections causing few or no symptoms, “it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalisations as opposed to the total number of cases”. Other experts argue that case counts still have value.
Dr Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University, said the case count does not appear to be the most important number now.
Instead, she said, the U.S. at this stage of the pandemic should be “shifting our focus, especially in an era of vaccination, to really focus on preventing illness, disability and death, and therefore counting those.”
with The Associated Press
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