Cairo -

In southern Egypt, the supervisory authorities arrested a nurse who sold a certificate of proof of obtaining the Corona virus vaccine without giving a dose of vaccination for 100 pounds (less than 10 dollars), in a health unit in Assiut Governorate.

The nurse is facing two charges of forging official papers and exploiting her position to receive a bribe. As a result, the Public Prosecution ordered her, last Wednesday, to imprison her for 15 days pending investigations.

And last February, the Ministry of Interior had announced the seizure of a gang formation specialized in forging certificates of analysis of the Corona virus and selling them to those wishing to travel outside the country, who had medical obstacles preventing them from traveling.

There are other incidents of fraud related to safety documents from the Corona virus that were revealed by the Ministries of Interior and Health, and it seems that this prompted the Egyptian government to warn on several levels of forging certificates proving receiving the vaccine.

As of November 15, the Egyptian government prevented its employees and university students from entering government departments and educational institutions without presenting a certificate of receiving at least one dose of the vaccine.

The government also announced that it will prevent citizens, starting from next December, from entering any entity affiliated with it, unless they present a certificate of receiving the vaccine or a corona examination known as “pcr” for a date not exceeding a week.

"Pahlwa" the Egyptians

And last October, the Public Prosecution conducted extensive investigations with officials of the Ministry of Health in Minya Governorate, in the context of revealing the mystery of the discovery of 40 boxes containing 13,214 doses of Sinopharm vaccine, lying on both sides of a canal in one of the villages of the Bani Mazar Center.

At that time, the journalist close to the authority, Muhammad Al-Baz, linked the vaccine doses that had been disposed of in Upper Egypt and the state of fear among citizens of receiving the vaccine, especially with the government urging its employees to receive the vaccine to allow them to enter their workplaces.

And he added, during his presentation of the "Akher Al-Nahar" program broadcast on Al-Nahar channel, "We have 26,000 ampoules that have been disposed of, and about 13,000 citizens were supposed to receive these doses... Do any of these thousands want to obtain the certificate without receiving the vaccine?"

Al-Baz added that there is a state of fear among citizens about vaccination, and he expected that some of them will be deceived in order to obtain forged certificates without receiving the vaccine, in what he called “the Egyptians’ silence.”

According to government officials’ statements, Egypt has spent $450 million on the purchase of coronavirus vaccines, and the number of citizens who received the first dose of vaccination reached about 27.5 million, of whom 14.5 million received the second dose as well, while the number of consumed doses of anti-vaccines reached about 42 million. dose.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, warned against forging certificates to obtain the Corona vaccine, and said in a statement to Al-Watan newspaper that in light of the decision to prevent employees from entering government facilities if they did not receive the vaccine, there has been a tightening by the Ministry of Health. To monitor any falsification of the vaccine certificate at the current stage.

The spokesman referred to several means by which the safety of the Corona vaccine certificate can be verified: the degree of durability of the paper on which the certificate is printed, the watermark placed on the certificate, the QR code on the certificate, and the clarity of the official seal of the Ministry of Health.

Abdel Ghaffar repeated his warnings through the “Good Morning Egypt” program broadcast on state television, stressing that the penalty for forging the certificate of obtaining the vaccine is a criminal penalty, whether the forgery, as he will be the perpetrator of the crime of forgery in official documents, or whoever uses the forged certificate, where he will be subject to the penalty of using Forged documents.

The Egyptian law punishes with hard imprisonment “every public office holder who, while performing his job, commits forgery in issued judgments, reports, minutes, documents, records, books, or other state bonds and papers, whether by placing forged signatures or seals, or by changing documents or seals, or signatures, or by adding words, or by placing forged names or pictures of other people.

The law also provides for the punishment of those who use forged documents, and considers it a crime whose punishment ranges from aggravated imprisonment or imprisonment from 3 to 10 years, while the law provides for the criminalization of a doctor’s issuance of a medical certificate or a false statement regarding pregnancy, illness, disability or death, where he is punished by imprisonment or A fine not exceeding 500 pounds.

Endowments are forbidden

On the same path, the Egyptian Dar al-Iftaa proceeded, and it held that forging certificates proving to receive the Corona virus vaccine is forbidden by Sharia because the act includes lies and many evils.

And the fatwa said - in a fatwa it issued last week - that the sin is on the holder of the forged testimony because he lied and told something other than the truth and that he may harm himself or others, and considered the forged doctor or nurse as a false witness and a traitor to the trust because of his leniency in writing false reports.

The Secretary of Fatwa at Dar Al Iftaa, Khaled Omran, considered that forging certificates for obtaining the Corona vaccine is a major sin, as it is a form of perjury, and he said in a telephone interview on Sada Al-Balad channel that forging the certificate of Corona vaccines harms others, in light of the possibility of transmitting the virus to them.

He added, "Everyone who helped forge the testimony, whether it was a doctor or an employee, are considered to be participants in this sin."

Why are people afraid of the vaccine?

Despite the fact that millions of Egyptians have obtained the Corona vaccine, whether out of their desire to prevent dangerous symptoms of the Corona virus or because of government pressures to receive the vaccine, there remains a state of anxiety that amounts to fear of the vaccines that were imported to confront the epidemic.

The Adviser to the President of the Republic for Health and Preventive Affairs, Muhammad Awad Taj El-Din, attributed the citizens’ fear of the vaccine to a number of reasons, including that all vaccines did not take enough time to prepare full studies on them, as they were approved on an emergency basis.

He added - in a telephone interview with the "Good Morning Egypt" program broadcast on Egyptian television - that people are usually afraid of anything new, which applies to the Corona virus and the approved vaccines to confront it, noting that the state of anxiety is a global phenomenon and not only in Egypt.

Among the reasons that caused fear among the Egyptians, according to Taj El-Din, is that some countries have temporarily suspended the use of some vaccines, in addition to the side effects of a number of vaccinations.

For his part, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health for Preventive Affairs, Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, attributed some people’s resort to forging certificates claiming that they had obtained the Corona vaccine to rumors about the dangers of vaccinations to human health.

In a telephone interview on Al-Nahar, he confirmed that all circulating vaccines have obtained approvals from the World Health Organization and scientific references, which means that they are safe.

He added that there are many epidemics and infectious diseases that have not been eliminated in the world except with vaccines, such as polio, measles and diphtheria, and it would have been impossible to confront them without the availability of vaccines.