A New York teacher was arrested and later reassigned on New Year’s Eve after she allegedly administered a COVID-19 vaccine injection to a teenager.
Laura Russo of Herricks Public Schools allegedly gave a 17-year-old boy a COVID-19 vaccine shot, and he then went home and told his mother. The teenager’s mother had not given permission to have her son vaccinated against COVID-19 and called the authorities, Nassau County Police Department’s arrest report states.
Police arrested Russo after concluding she is not a medical professional and doesn’t have the authorization to administer vaccines. She was charged with New York State Education Law unauthorized practice of a profession and released on a desk appearance ticket. She is due to appear in court on Jan. 21.
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Footage obtained by the outlet shows Russo preparing to administer the vaccine to the teenager, whose face is blurred out. The video is captioned with “never been so uncomfy in his life.”
“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
Russo appears to be giving Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only recommends people age 18 and older get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, with the only COVID-19 vaccine approved for those under 18 being the Pfizer-BioNTech version.
A spokesperson at Janssen, the pharmaceutical company owned by Johnson & Johnson, told the Washington Examiner the company is currently studying the effects of its COVID-19 vaccine in teenagers.
“The company has initiated a Phase 2/3 clinical trial in healthy adolescents from 12 to 17 years with the goal of obtaining valuable insights into the safety and immune responses of our vaccine in this critical group,” the spokesperson said.
Russo’s homepage on Herricks Public Schools’s website indicates she is a biology teacher. District officials told NBC 4 the allegations are not related to school and did not occur on school property.
“The individual in question is a district employee who has been removed from the classroom and reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation,” the school told the outlet.
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Herricks Public Schools told the Washington Examiner it did not have any comment for this story.
