Several employees at Newark, N.J.-based University Hospital have been fired for submitting fake vaccine cards to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to a Sept. 2 nj.com report.
Six things to know:
1. The hospital said in June that all employees must be vaccinated or they risked termination. The hospital found that some of the cards their employees submitted to comply with the mandate were not authentic.
2. "We took a critical look at the cards and found noticeable differences between the way the cards looked and the way the real CDC cards looked," said Shereef Elnahal, MD, CEO of the hospital. "We were able to detect those cases, thankfully. It makes everybody less safe if people are dishonest about their vaccination status."
3. The hospital did not report the positions of the fired employees or how they obtained the fake vaccine cards.
4. The hospital declined to specifically address the reported terminations, according to the report.
5. Several hospital employees have been linked to using fake vaccine cards. New York prosecutors charged Jasmine Clifford of New Jersey for allegedly selling 250 fraudulent vaccine cards through her Instagram account. Ms. Clifford allegedly worked with Nadayza Barkley, who worked at a New York medical clinic, to enter names into the state's vaccine database. Some of the purchasers worked in hospitals.
6. In mid-August, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials reportedly seized 121 packages from China that contained more than 3,000 counterfeit vaccination cards.