Italian police have arrested a nurse on charges that he faked giving coronavirus vaccinations to at least 45 people so they could get a health pass fraudulently, ditching vaccines in a bin and even putting bandages on his “patients” so no one would suspect the scam.
Police in Ancona, on Italyʼs eastern coast, also placed four suspected accomplices under house arrest, accusing them of finding anti-vaccine customers who were willing to pay for a health pass rather than get the shots. Forty-five people who apparently received the passes as part of the scam are under investigation, required to check in daily with police and prevented from leaving their cities, ABC News reports.
The police had filmed the nurse at work in the vaccine hub of Ancona as he squirted the needleʼs contents into the medical waste bin before pretending to inject the patientʼs arm, before applying a plaster.
The suspects are accused of corruption, falsifying information and embezzlement, although police added that the fake vaccination scheme also wasted a “fundamental public resource”.
Italy has cracked down increasingly hard on the unvaccinated, requiring proof of vaccination or a recent recovery from COVID-19 to access a host of leisure activities as well as services like public transport.
The country, where the outbreak first erupted in Europe in February 2020, has inoculated 86% of its over-12 population and administered boosters to about 60% of those eligible, reports ABC.
There have been several cases of police investigations into fake health passes, and one headline-grabbing case of a dentist who went to get his vaccine with a silicone fake arm. After this led to a criminal investigation, the dentist admitted he had been vaccinated and was merely protesting the government's vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.
ABC News article – Police: Nurse in Italy caught faking shots, ditching vaccine (Open access)
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