ORLANDO, Florida – A couple of younger residents of central Florida have found a creative way to look for COVID-19 vaccines aimed at residents 65 and older.
What you need to know
- An Orange County Department of Health official says two women disguised as “grandmothers”
- People 65 and older can get the COVID-19 vaccine at Department of Health sites
- Pino: There have been other “few” cases of people misrepresenting
Two younger-looking women “came disguised as grandmothers” Wednesday at the Orange County Convention Center to try to get vaccinated against COVID, health chief Dr. Thursday said. Raul Pino.
“The bonnets, the gloves, the glasses, all of that,” Pino said at a news conference on the Orange County coronavirus.
The women were looking for the second shot of coronavirus, Pino said.
Pino said they had no details on how they might have gotten the first doses, but said the women carried valid vaccination cards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But “there were some issues with their IDs and their driver’s licenses,” he said.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office told Spectrum News in an email Thursday afternoon that Florida Department of Health staff in Orange County asked lawmakers to “issue rape notice to two women who arrived at the site of the Covid Vaccine Convention Center, with dates of birth that did not match those they had used to register for the vaccines, but the names matched the registration. “
The sheriff’s office said it was not taking any further action.
The women were 34 and 44 years old, according to the dates of birth provided by the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s office said it had no other information. “And we don’t have any information on whether they wore costumes or how they were dressed,” he said.
Pino, the health official, noted a “very high demand” for vaccinations in Orange County, as elsewhere, and said “there have been some” cases of residents procrastinating on attempts to get vaccinated. .
In another case, said Pino, a man with the same name as his father showed an ID that included a different birthday from his father.
“They’re all different and creative,” Pino said of these vaccination attempts. “But we have access to a lot of information, so we can quickly verify who’s who.”
He acknowledged that as the county tries to vaccinate more people at a faster rate – announcing Thursday that officials plan to vaccinate up to 3,000 seniors a day at the Orange County Convention Center – “some people could introduce so that (these cases are probably) higher than we suspected “.