Anosh Ahmed, the chief operating officer at Loretto Hospital on the West side of Chicago, has resigned from his post following the revelatory reports that he had sent vaccine doses meant for residents of the majority-Black, low-income neighborhood to considerably richer and whiter people in Chicago—including Eric Trump.
Ahmed’s resignation was announced on Wednesday by Loretto, reports the Washington Post.
His departure comes after Block Club Chicago additionally revealed that Ahmed had reportedly arranged for high-level staff at a ritzy Chicago steakhouse to be vaccinated with the doses his hospital received from the city for Black and brown residents living in a community disproportionately hard hit by the coronavirus.
The distasteful story of Ahmed’s alleged flagrant misuse of COVID-19 vaccines that the city had allocated for underserved Chicagoans went public after the executive sent a picture bragging that he had vaccinated Donald Trump’s son at a mass inoculation event his hospital carried out at the Trump Hotel in Downtown Chicago. Ahmed owns a $2.7 million condo at the Trump property, according to the Washington Post.
Block Club Chicago first reported that Loretto was distributing the vaccines to people in some of Chicago’s wealthiest zip codes, though they were supplied to the hospital expressly for the purpose of improving vaccination equity in a city where residents of majority-Black and brown communities still lag far behind whiter, wealthier residents in terms of being inoculated from the coronavirus.
As the story continued to unfold, Block Club Chicago reported that Loretto had provided vaccinations to people at a luxury jewelry store on Chicago’s Gold Coast where Ahmed was a frequent customer. Loretto’s CEO, a Black man named Gregory Miller, was also found to have steered vaccinations to more than 200 members of his church, located in a suburb miles from Chicago’s West side. The board of the hospital previously said it had reprimanded Ahmed and Miller.
Meanwhile, the city of Chicago has cut off Loretto Hospital’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines amid a continuing investigation of the controversy.