Ministry of Health and Medical Services Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong yesterday confirmed that the ministry has suspended a number of its staff over allegations of vaccination card scam.

Dr Fong said there had been a long standing investigation that looked into this issue.

He said there had been some people who they had caught out and suspended in the process. Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro had also confirmed that there was an investigation currently underway in relation to an alleged scam where several people had been questioned as investigations were ongoing.

“I presume that as the year goes by we will catch a few more people not only from the Ministry of Health, but other people that have been involved in the use of fake vaxx cards,” Dr Fong said.

“The situation is difficult because we were asked to deploy rapidly, so we had to come up with a system that was not likely to be full proof and of course it has proven to be not full proof,” he said.

“And now we have to mitigate the fact that we had to start the vaccination programme fast, this was the risk when we had to start the programme fast.”

He said if the ministry had a lot of time to plan the vaccine deployment well, the problem could have been avoided.

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