As more persons were recently charged with forging COVID-19 vaccine cards, the Minister of Health on Wednesday stated that if the authorities get the names of persons who purchased them, they would be charged.
This was disclosed during Dr Frank Anthony’s daily COVID-19 update, where he stressed that it is a dangerous activity that persons are engaging in as it relates to forging and even procuring forged cards.
“If we get the names of the people who would have purchased such cards, the police obviously would be pursuing them and they would be charged for obtaining a fraudulent document or obtaining a false document,” he said while emphasising that this is something the authorities will be pursuing.
The health minister noted that it is a very dangerous act because if someone who is in possession of a fake vaccination card gets sick and goes to the hospital with a severe form of COVID, the doctors there may falsely assume that they may have some hope that the persons has been vaccinated and has produced antibodies.
He said, “It is gonna be a challenge with these fake cards circulating and not knowing the true status of those persons.”
Meanwhile, during the update, the minister stated that the ministry has put a team together and is still working to digitize the COVID-19 vaccination card records and to further ensure that there is an appropriate software to do so.
In this regard, he mentioned that the authorities are still in discussion with the Indian Government to procure the COWIN software for COVID-19 records. He expressed the hope that as the discussions conclude, they will be able to have the software for use.
“Right now we have digitized the records but we now have to import it into a software so that you can have easy reference and so forth,” he said.
