Nurse steals IV opioids from patients, spreads hepatitis C to 7, Utah prosecutors say
A Utah nurse is set to be sentenced this week after prosecutors said she admitted to stealing narcotic painkillers from a hospital — and infecting at least seven patients there with hepatitis C.
The nurse, Elet Neilson, admitted to Utah investigators that from June to December 2014 she diverted narcotic pain medication such as “morphine from the stock at McKay-Dee Hospital for her own use, and without authorization from her employer or a valid prescription, approximately once a week,” federal prosecutors said in an indictment.
“As a result … at least seven people have become infected with hepatitis C 2B” at the Ogden medical facility, prosecutors said, adding that patients given drugs “handled by Neilson before or during their administration were infected with not only the same genotype of HCV 2B as Neilson, but the same sub-genotype.”
That indictment, filed in U.S. District Court in Utah, charged Neilson with tampering with a consumer product and fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.
“She was taking medicine that was supposed to be delivered under her care to a patient, and she used part of it for her own selfish needs and desires,” said U.S. Attorney John Huber, according to ABC4 Utah. “Whether she has an addiction, I don’t know.”
Neilson will be sentenced on Thursday, according to court records.
Officials didn’t say exactly how Neilson spread the virus, but CDC epidemiologist Angela Dunn said that “in the U.S., the most common way of transmitting hepatitis C is through needles, and the only way to transmit hepatitis C is blood to blood,” the Deseret News reported.
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According to a plea agreement filed in September 2019, Neilson, then 53 years old, agreed to plead guilty to four counts from an earlier 16-count indictment.
“When you have a trained medical professional succumbing to opioid abuse and use, you’ve got a problem,” Huber said, tying the indictment to the broader opioid epidemic, according to ABC4.
As part of the plea, prosecutors “agreed to not argue for a sentence longer than 10 years,” the agreement said.
Neilson is accused of spreading hepatitis C elsewhere, too: The Standard Examiner reported that she’s accused of exposing people to the disease at Davis Hospital, which resulted in both hospitals having “to notify 7,200 former patients of possible exposure to the disease… More than 3,700 people came forward for blood tests, and the Utah Department of Health said 16 positive cases of hepatitis C 2b were identified.”
Hepatitis C is a liver infection that, for some people, is only a short-term illness — but for 70 percent to 85 percent of those infected with the virus, the disease is long-term, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Today, most people become infected with the hepatitis C virus by sharing needles or other equipment to inject drugs,” CDC officials write.
There is no vaccine, according to the CDC.
“Most people with chronic [hepatitis C] infection are asymptomatic or have non-specific symptoms such as chronic fatigue and depression,” CDC officials say. “Many eventually develop chronic liver disease, which can range from mild to severe, including cirrhosis and liver cancer.”
