Welsh Health Minister, Vaughan Gething has revealed that scammers have been defrauding people by selling fake COVID-19 vaccines to them, with some victims receiving unidentified jabs.
A mass vaccination programme is being run across the United Kingdom by the state-owned National Health Service (NHS), which provides all care including vaccines free of charge.
“There are a number of scams involving COVID, including a particularly nasty one in which people have been tricked into paying for a COVID vaccine and then jabbed in the arm,” said Mr Gething, at a press briefing.
“I want to be clear, our NHS will never ask anyone to pay for a COVID vaccine. These are free. The NHS will never ask for your bank details and vaccines are not being delivered to your front door by people who have not been identified as NHS staff.”
The Minister’s warning comes after UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) urged the public to be vigilant, reporting that scammers were asking elderly and vulnerable people for payment in return for access to vaccines that were fake or non-existent.
“The current level of reported fraud in relation to the vaccine remains very low but is increasing,” said Graeme Biggar, Director General of the National Economic Crime Centre at the NCA.
The City of London police have also reported that a scammer had obtained 160 pounds from a 92-year-old woman and had jabbed her in the arm with what she described as a “dart-like implement” after he turned up unannounced at her home.
Britain is currently battling a surge in infections which has pushed the total UK COVID-19 death toll above 81,000 and led to the imposition of national lockdowns in England and Scotland and tight restrictions in Wales and Northern Ireland.
UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that the government “may have to do more” if ministers feel lockdown rules “are not being properly observed.”
The PM is facing calls for a tightening of the restrictions in order to drive down COVID-19 infections.
“We’re going to keep the rules under constant review, where we have to tighten them, we will. But we have rules in place already which – if they are properly followed – we believe can make a huge, huge difference.
“It’s now people need to focus. When they’re out shopping, whether they’re buying cups of coffee in the park, or whatever it happens to be, they need to think about spreading the disease.
One contact that you have can be a chain of transmission of this disease.”
The prime minister also told the public that “now is the moment of maximum vigilance, maximum observance of the rules”.
“Of course, if we feel things are not being properly observed, then we may have to do more. But, far, far better for people to obey the rules that we have, then to simply promulgate new rules.”
England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, also urged the public to play their part – by abiding by lockdown rules – in order to avoid even more COVID deaths.
He warned that the next few weeks would be the “worst weeks of the pandemic” for the NHS, with more than 30,000 people currently in hospital with the virus.
Prof Whitty said that people needed to “double down” and stop any “unnecessary contacts”, as he described how the new COVID variant was “pushing things in a way that the old variant – which was already very bad – was not able to”
