The following article was in the Sunday Times today:
"Vaccination centres are detecting rising numbers of queue-jumpers as Britain prepares to face a four-week jab drought. Officials say people pose as care or health workers to cheat their way to an early jab.
They fear fraudulent bookings will soar before next month’s slower rollout. When cheats are caught, vaccination slots that could have gone to people entitled to a jab are wasted.
Last Wednesday, the day that news emerged of a “significant reduction” in vaccine supply in April, the number of people booking appointments doubled.
There were 708,927 first and second dose jab appointments booked on Wednesday compared with 305,087 on Tuesday. Vaccines are being held up by production problems and a surge in Covid-19 cases in India, which wants to keep more of its supply at home.
Anyone can fraudulently book a jab on the national booking website by ticking a box to say they work in health or social care or provide “personal care” for people in their homes. The NHS insists those who do this but “do not bring official proof” to their appointment “will not be vaccinated”.
But officials say the loophole means rising numbers are trying to exploit a system that is “open to abuse”. Some sites are catching 15 queue-jumpers a day and fear that more are slipping through.
One pharmacist said he has been forced to call the police three times because of the threat of violence when turning fraudsters away. Others say the open nature of the national booking system has sparked an “ethical struggle” at vaccination centres.
They face a “difficult balance” between wanting to avoid wasted doses or appointment slots and rigorously checking ID cards and employment details.
Bhaveen Patel, who runs a Covid-19 vaccination clinic in Brixton, south London, turns away at least 15 queue-jumpers each day.
He said: “We’re getting a lot more people claiming to be unpaid carers now.”
Patel said many are surprised to be turned away for not having evidence to support their employment claims. “We’ve had to call the police a few times because of it. We’ve had people shouting, screaming, swearing.”
One man in his thirties, who works for Ocado but was posing as a social care worker, threatened violence until his girlfriend persuaded him to leave before police arrived.
Patel said he “understood their frustration”, but feared he and his staff would get into trouble if they began vaccinating queue-jumpers who were not eligible. He said he was grateful to the police who had “defused” crisis moments when his staff had exposed queue-jumpers.
But he said it was a “sad” trend, because the slots allocated to those turning up on false pretences were then left “wasted”, when legitimate patients could have been vaccinated. Patel also said the confrontations were “upsetting” for other people waiting patiently for their jab.
“We’re fully booked every day,” he said. “And then when you’ve got to turn people away — those are appointments that other people needed, in their sixties, in their seventies.”
Patel said officials at other vaccine sites had told him they were “in the same boat”. He said the system was “open to abuse” and added: “I think the checking of ID should be done at the website stage.”
A health official in Greater Manchester suggested the problems were at mass vaccination centres and pharmacy-led sites: “You don’t tend to see it in rural areas or smaller, GP-led sites.”
Ash Soni, who leads a Covid-19 vaccination clinic in Streatham, south London, said he had dozens of restaurant, retail and off-licence workers posing as social care workers every week.
A former president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, he suspected that some of the recent no-shows his clinic had seen were people who had heard his clinic was checking ID papers.
A woman caught trying to jump the queue turned out to be a mother who had “put herself down as a carer for her children”, Soni recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, are your children quite unwell then?’ She responded, ‘No, no — they’re fine. I’m a housewife, so I’m a carer.”
When Soni explained that her booking was fraudulent, she became “extremely apologetic”. He has also seen a “significant number” of no-shows in recent days because of concerns over side-effects. Some who learn they are going to have the AstraZeneca jab “walk back out again”.
Soni believes some queue-jumpers are motivated by the need to prove they have had a jab if they wish to go on holiday abroad this summer.
NHS England said: “Frontline health and social care workers booking a vaccination appointment on the national booking system are clearly informed that they must bring proof of eligibility to the vaccination site during the booking process.
“There is no evidence that significant numbers of people are lying several times in an effort to jump the queue.
“Those who are unable to prove they work in a qualifying role will be turned away and the vaccine offered to eligible people on a clinic’s reserve list. Ultimately, the most important point is that 23 million people have already had their vaccine.”
@AndrewGregory