The Western Cape Department of Health said some people are posing as healthcare workers in order to ensure they gain early access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Department reportedly said that the fraudulent activity has been detected in other provinces, according to News24.
“To ensure that we prevent any situation emerging where a non-healthcare worker poses as a health care worker during this first phase of this vaccination programme, we will be requesting all health care worker to show staff identification, or to provide their Health Professions Council registration number as verification,” said the Department at Premier Alan Winde’s weekly digital press conference.
During Phase 1, healthcare workers are the number one priority for the Department and it urged residents “not to try and skip the queue ahead of our frontline workers.”
As of 5pm on Tuesday, February 23, the province had administered 5389 vaccines. The Department reports that the vaccination of healthcare workers is progressing well and approximately 41% of the 13 000 jabs it was allocated have been administered just one week after the first vaccine was given.
The Department said the number of people receiving daily jabs is increasing and added that it has experienced some minor challenges during the rollout of Phase 1 but said that most of them have been addressed and resolved.
“Early on, syringe filling times caused some delays, but ongoing training of pharmacists has helped to resolve this problem. We have also experienced some challenges with the national government’s electronic system, however, we have been able to rely on a paper-based backup system while these issues were being addressed.”
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