ANGELES CITY, Philippines – When the City of Angeles gave the green light to reopen recreational facilities in mid-2022 after a two-year COVID-19 shutdown, the first thing that was done was to update staff fitness cards in the bustling bar community of Avenida de los Campos.
In accordance with pandemic control guidelines, the government added the COVID-19 vaccination card to the list of requirements for cattle to download a certificate of fitness.
“We knew that many artists were vaccinated. That’s why we set up a Rondabakuna on Fields Avenue to accommodate them,” the chief counsel for the city of Angeles, IC, said Calaguas in an English and Filipino attaché.
It made sense for the city to launch a vaccination campaign at the popular nightclub, frequented by shoppers eager to take a well-deserved break from the strain of the pandemic.
Before COVID-19, Calaguas said, about 3,000 artists worked in bars splashing a 500-meter pedestrian amid festivities and surrounding streets. Fields Avenue opened in it to accommodate the U. S. military stationed at Clark Air Force Base.
The number of staff who need fitness cards is much higher now, as they come with other service personnel, those who paint in massage parlors, cleaners, an army of other people who are busy with neon lights. Before the pandemic, around 5,000 businesses were registered with the City of Angels Artists League.
Of course, there were those who refused to get vaccinated, but, according to Calaguas, “they needed a vax card to get back to work. “
Recall that at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, then-President Rodrigo Duterte declared a state of national emergency. The crisis eventually led local governments to convene all available staff to help with the vaccination program.
“All the departments were involved,” Calaguas said. It doesn’t matter if you are CENRO [City Environment and Natural Resources Office], it doesn’t matter if you are kung sanitation ka, tulong-tulong kami midi eh (it doesn’t matter if it is [with] the sanitation [department], they all worked together). “
In August, when the artists’ vaccination campaign was in full swing, staff at the sanitation branch, the company that issues fitness cards, detected that something was wrong.
They may simply locate the names of at least thirteen artists with vaccination cards in the Knowledge Base of the Bureau of Gender and Development (GAD), which collects knowledge on vaccination, the same knowledge that is shared with sanitation staff.
This would not have triggered an alert since, in the country, other vaccinated people seeking a certificate had reported that their names were not in the national passport database. All they had to do was go to their local passport drive and request their files to be downloaded. (READ: Philippines Virtual Vaccine Certificate Formula Launch for OFW, Some Travelers)
But the sanitation unit’s staff detected other irregularities. For example, some of the maps showed vaccination dates when no vaccination operations had been performed. Other cards have brand names, such as Pfizer, although they were not distributed on the dates indicated.
Calaguas said, “Either ‘yung date na’ yun wala kaming bakuna, or ‘yung time na’ yun Hindi Pfizer ‘yung ginamit, but Pfizer ‘yung nandoon. ‘”some argued about Pfizer when that wasn’t what we were using. )
The finding cemented a bar employee’s claim regarding the artists, who told sanitation service employees that a young employee assigned to CENRO was selling COVID-19 vaccination cards down Fields Avenue.
After the city began operating mega vaccination sites in March 2021, it was reported as early as April and May that some other service people were selling vaccination forms.
“Remember, the first time the vaccines arrived, was there a limited supply?” recalled Calaguas. This bureaucracy would allow carriers to skip the line, as a first priority for vaccine preparation staff and other frontline personnel vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. , followed by the elderly and others with comorbidities.
Indistinct words about the bureaucracy being sold went unanswered. The city government failed to investigate the reports very well and instead placed CCTV monitors around vaccination sites and culprits’ offices to deter and facilitate surveillance.
An attempt to combine how vaccination card-related anomalies occurred revealed that a young CENRO worker was given genuine vaccination cards while on duty at the City University of Angeles’ mega vaccination site. She is known as Janine Lising.
Lising and some barangay nutrition specialists were tasked with completing vaccination cards and had a simple key resource: blank vax cards that were not monitored.
It’s a bar guilty of the artists who helped investigators identify Lising as the source of the fraudulent vaccination cards. The bartender showed an exchange of messages with Lising as city staff began asking questions about the workers’ vaccination cards.
“It was a coincidence that we then met with the city’s fitness board. We asked, ‘Is it you?Did you communicate with that person?’, Calaguas told Rappler.
The CENRO worker admitted that it was her, but first of all said that he had only taken out 4 cards. But, on August 18, the health office discovered thirteen other fake maps, all allegedly also of Lising. The discovery of the thirteen maps prompted the city government to register a lawsuit against Lising on August 23.
Lising was detained overnight at Station 3 of the City of Angeles Police Bureau (ACPO) the same day, but was released the next day, Aug. 24, police told Rappler.
The police filed thirteen legal proceedings against her for falsifying public documents, with one complaint depicting a forged vaccination record that passed through the GAD office.
Mayor Carmelo Lazatin Jr. said the Lising organization forged the signatures and license numbers of two of the city’s vaccinators, Glenda Aromin and Anna Unika Marieya Cabigting. Both signed affidavits confirming that the signatures on the vaccination records were their own.
“There is no vaccination [of artists] in the Covid database center of the city of Angeles,” said Mina Cabales, head of gad.
Calaguas told Rappler on Aug. 30 and Sept. 1 that Lising admitted to receiving about 1,000 cards.
“Lising said he won about 1,000 cards. That’s his statement. But we couldn’t get the 1,000 cards he mentioned,” Calaguas said in a combination of English and Filipino.
Lising sold the thirteen cards to the artists for P1,000 after filling them with false information. It is not yet known what happened to the rest of the maps. City officials are still thinking about what is the most productive way to stick to them.
Rappler sought Lising’s side, but she refused to make a statement. His initial hearing is scheduled for the fifth of September.
Lazatin ordered court cases against everyone involved in the scam, adding lising consumers and others who helped facilitate sales. The village has retained their names due to the ongoing investigation. GAD are the additional affidavits, Calaguas told Rappler.
In an interview with Rappler on Tuesday, Aug. 30, city officials stated that at a time when local governments were feverishly seeking to vaccinate as many citizens as possible, the lack of mechanisms around the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine cards allowed the cards to be delivered. stole and paved the way for fraud.
“Tama, original vaccination cards. [They are fake] because it malicious ‘yung data. But’yung card itself, its original city,” Calaguas said. the knowledge they contained is false. But the map itself is original to the city. )
All vaccination records in the city come from the fitness service.
“The vax cards were not LED. The format did not come with a number. Well, who was going to have any idea that someone would benefit?” says the municipal councilor.
“By November 2021, CENRO staff were no longer at the mega vaccination site,” Calaguas said, as new equipment had been incorporated. He said the substitution was not due to the discovery of the fraud.
Calaguas warned those who remain a vaccination fraud: “With the centralized database of the Department of Information and Communications Technologies, if you make a fake card, in the end you can’t use it. “
Ángeles is the first LGU to notice the use of fake vaccination cards. In November 2021, Negros Occidental surprised two travelers with fake COVID-19 vaccination cards.
In January 2022, officials in the city of Rosario, in cavite province, caught two fishermen who allegedly forged vaccination cards. Seals
In February 2022, the Manila Police District also arrested 3 suspects in the production of counterfeit vaccination cards.
But the case of the city of Angeles represents a more troubling case, involving genuine vax cards, with false information.
Calaguas said what the people had discovered so far was “just the tip of the iceberg. “
If a person, a very young employee, can get his hands on a thousand cards, we will have to ask: how many other cards issued through the DOH with false main points are in the hands of unvaccinated people?
The City of Angels initiated corrective actions as soon as officials became aware of Lising’s plan.
“Now, when we deliver vax cards, say, to Rural Health Unit 1, we assign internal numbers,” Calaguas told Rappler.
“If RHU 1 receives 50 cards, we place on the back, individually, the numbers from 1 to 50. If RHU 2 receives the same number of cards, the numbers on the back will be from 1 to 100. So if there is a problem, we know which unit distributed this card,” explained the city’s lead councilman.
According to conversations with the city’s fitness unit, at the end of the day, agencies will count vaccination records.
Other government sets such as Mabalacat, also in Pampanga, use a QR code.
The city of Angeles has the best vaccination coverage. Their data Facebook page reports that another 380,496 people were fully vaccinated and more than 89,000 received the first booster shots.
The number of people fully vaccinated exceeds its initial target of 324,977, adding children five to 17. The town has a population of 462,928.
Currently, the city is implementing Suyod Bakuna, a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
“We want to increase the number of seniors getting retirements,” Calaguas said, adding that the city needs the backlog of another 4,000 people in the area.
The local government is also intensifying the vaccination of schoolchildren and other minors, it is complying with the new policy of the Ministry of Education and the Higher Education Commission that does not require vaccination of schoolchildren returning to face-to-face classes. – Rappler. COM