Singapore Charges Three Over Covid-19 Vaccination Fraud Scheme

A doctor was charged with abetment by conspiracy to cheat for allegedly submitting false information to the National Immunisation Registry about administering Covid vaccines when he had not.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 24 – Three people, including a doctor, have been prosecuted in court in Singapore over an alleged scheme to obtain Covid-19 vaccination certificates for clients without inoculating them.

Channel News Asia reported that 46-year-old Iris Koh, founder of a Covid vaccine-hesitant group called Healing the Divide, was charged yesterday with one count of conspiracy to cheat. 

Koh was accused of referring clients, believed to be members of Healing the Divide, to a medical practitioner, and had allegedly suggested administering something in lieu of the coronavirus vaccine to people.

The doctor named Dr Jipson Quah and his assistant, Chua Cheng Soon Thomas, were charged last Friday with abetment by conspiracy to cheat. 

Police reportedly said Dr Quah and Chua had submitted information “with the intention to induce MOH to issue the Certificate of Vaccination against Covid-19 in the TraceTogether application”.

Dr Quah was accused of submitting false information to the National Immunisation Registry to indicate that he had administered Sinopharm vaccines, when he had not in reality. 

Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a statement yesterday that its investigations found that Dr Quah, a registered medical practitioner at Wan Medical Clinic, was allegedly involved in providing false information to the National Immunisation Registry for his patients to indicate that they were vaccinated against Covid-19, when they had actually not received their shots.

Wan Medical Clinic, said Singapore’s MOH, allegedly allowed members of Healing the Divide to submit to the clinic pre-recorded videos and/or photographs purporting to show that they had performed antigen rapid test (ART) pre-event testing (PET) on themselves. The clinic then allegedly uploaded negative ART results for these individuals.

PET done without the supervision of a registered medical practitioner or a qualified self-administered test supervisor is a criminal offence in Singapore.

Singapore’s MOH also accused Dr Quah of submitting a false positive ART result so that the unvaccinated patient could obtain a “recovered” status and be exempted from movement restrictions for unvaccinated individuals.

Pending the outcome of investigations, Singapore’s MOH will be suspending Wan Medical Clinic and three other clinics that were licensed to Dr Quah or where he is a clinic manager, in addition to revoking ART approvals for these facilities. 

He will also be referred to the Singapore Medical Council for further investigations.

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