The Union Health Ministry on Friday admitted that wrong Covid-19 vaccine certificates against dead individuals were issued, but said that such errors happened due to data entry errors.
“In occasional isolated cases, vaccination certificates are generated for people who were deceased or those who did not receive the vaccine,” Bharati Pravin Pawar, the minister of state for health said responding to a written question in the Lok Sabha.
These cases were due to inadvertent data entry errors by vaccinators in updating the vaccination data of the second dose of beneficiaries, she said in response to a question raised by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.
The admission from the government came in the wake of several revelations on such fraudulent certificates, including the latest one from Bihar in which false Covid-19 vaccination certificates were issued in the name of public figures such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and film actor Priyanka Chopra.
When asked what the Union Health Ministry is doing to stop bogus beneficiaries, officials said that such reports were anecdotal in nature. “The reports are anecdotal in nature. I don't think there is any major mettle in such reports,” said Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research.
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(Published 10 December 2021, 16:27 IST)
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