Italian police have arrested a nurse in Palermo for allegedly pretending to give COVID-19 vaccines to anti-vaccine protesters so they could benefit from official health certificates to travel and access bars, restaurants and public transport.
Investigators used a hidden camera to film the nurse, a 58-year-old woman working at a major inoculation center in the Sicilian capital.
The video, released on Saturday on Twitter, shows the health worker apparently loading up a dose of COVID-19 vaccine and then emptying the syringe into a tissue before injecting it into the arms of anti-vaccine protesters.
Police said the woman’s own booster dose was fake, and arrested her on charges of forgery and embezzlement.
It was not the first time a nurse has been arrested in Italy for pretending to inject vaccines. Dozens of health workers, including at least three doctors, have been charged or investigated on suspicion of administering fake jabs to people, with some paying up to 400 euros (US$457) each for the service.
An Italian nurse in Ancona in the Marche region on Wednesday last week was arrested for allegedly giving fake vaccines to at least 45 people. The health worker allegedly emptied vaccines into a medical waste bin.
Italian anti-vaccine protesters were willing to pay up to 300 euros for the service to receive the so-called “super green pass” introduced by the Italian government last month, and required to access cinemas, gyms, nightclubs and stadiums, as well as to be served indoors at bars and restaurants, investigators said.
The nurse arrested on Friday in Palermo is the second health worker from the same hospital in the city to end up in prison. Police on Dec. 21 uncovered another alleged scam with dozens of anti-vaccination holdouts, including a police officer, paying a nurse up to 400 euros to give them fake jabs.
The woman, who faces charges of corruption and forgery, pleaded guilty and began to collaborate with authorities by revealing the details of the scam and the names of her accomplices.
The nurse told investigators that she injected fake vaccines because she needed money to support her son at university.
“We have uncovered the dark and fraudulent plots of these diehard, no-vax people who do not hesitate to break the law,” Palermo Police Commissioner Leopoldo Laricchia said in a statement. “This investigation also shows how, unfortunately, there are still unvaccinated health workers who work in hospitals in close contact with patients.”
A glimpse of a possible Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos filmed during a visit by her son after his presidential election win has set off a flurry of speculation in the Philippines, where the family that once plundered billions is set to return to power. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, won a landslide victory in Monday’s presidential election, an outcome that has appalled those who survived his father’s regime. Images released by the family showed Marcos Jr visiting the home of his mother, who had displayed Picasso’s Femme Couche VI (Reclining Woman VI),
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
HATE CRIME: Officials were investigating a detailed ‘manifesto’ posted online before the livestreamed shooting, in which the suspect outlined his reasoning and plans A heavily armed 18-year-old white man on Saturday shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a “racially motivated” attack that he livestreamed on camera, authorities said. The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said. Among those killed inside the store was
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines
RSS