Serious irregularities have possibly occurred across India in the Covid-19 vaccination drive for Health Care Workers (HCW) and Front Line Workers (FLW) compelling the Union Health Ministry to immediately stop any fresh registrations for the first doses of HCWs and FLWs, because the Ministry received inputs that imposters have fraudulently got vaccinated at many vaccination centres of the country.
The Health Ministry also detected an unexplained sudden spike of 24 per cent in the national database of HCWs since the vaccination drive began. This abrupt increase in the number of HCWs in the country raises the suspicion that some sort of Covid-19 vaccination scam has indeed taken place.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan shot a letter on 3 April to top health officials of all states and UTs directing them to not allow any new registrations of HCWs and FLWs for the first doses of vaccines.
The CoWIN portal has also stopped accepting any fresh registrations for the two categories since then.
“Various inputs have been received from different sources that in some of the CVC’s (Covid-19 Vaccination Centres), some ineligible beneficiaries are being registered as HCWs and FLWs and are getting vaccinated in complete violation of the prescribed guidelines,” Rajesh Bhushan’s letter points out.
“There has been 24 % increase in HCW database in the past few days,” the letter notes. The issue came to light at the meeting of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration (NEGVAC) for Covid-19 held on 3 April.