The is­sue of the sale of fake vac­ci­na­tion cards in the face of the pro­posed roll­out of safe zones at gov­ern­ment of­fices is wor­ri­some and down­right dan­ger­ous.

It is dis­heart­en­ing and in­deed con­cern­ing that adults who are re­fus­ing to take the vac­cines for all sorts of rea­sons, would so try to de­ceive their em­ploy­ers while aid­ing and abet­ting law­break­ers by en­cour­ag­ing the sale of these false vac­ci­na­tion cards.

For the many pub­lic of­fi­cers who may be tempt­ed to go the route of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the scam, not on­ly are there le­gal con­se­quences but health con­se­quences as well.

One ex­am­ple is that of an of­fice with pub­lic of­fi­cers show­ing up to work un­vac­ci­nat­ed but proud­ly dis­play­ing their new­ly pur­chased vac­ci­na­tion cards. If just one among them has COVID-19 and spreads it, whose pur­pose would it have served by the pos­ses­sion of a card, be­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed and plac­ing one's fam­i­ly in harm's way?

Every ac­tion has a re­ac­tion and every de­ci­sion has a con­se­quence.

Why en­cour­age those who have found a way to make a quick buck off those fool­ish enough to think they are fool­ing any­body but them­selves?

There had been re­ports of fake vac­ci­na­tion cards in cir­cu­la­tion in re­cent months.

Last Sep­tem­ber two peo­ple were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the scam. But on the brink of the pub­lic sec­tor safe zone plan, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has met with po­lice to dis­cuss a crack­down on fake vac­ci­na­tion cards, which are be­ing sold for any­where be­tween $800 to $1,800.

One must jux­ta­pose the price for a vac­cine card against the num­ber of T&T na­tion­als who have died from COVID-19 which now num­bers over 3,000 ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial Min­istry of Health da­ta.

If that does not paint a pic­ture of the re­al­i­ty of the im­pact of the virus on T&T we don't know what will.

So far since vac­ci­na­tions be­gan ear­ly last year 674,197 peo­ple in T&T have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

The gov­ern­ment is now of­fer­ing boost­er shots and ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health da­ta so far just over 88,000 peo­ple have re­ceived them.

Whether you take the vac­cine or not is a per­son­al choice.

But that choice should not com­pro­mise oth­er peo­ple. Buy­ing fake cards to es­cape be­ing fur­loughed can­not be fair to peo­ple who have made the choice to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

The au­thor­i­ties owe it to those who make the choice to get vac­ci­nat­ed, to do what is re­quired to en­sure that false vac­ci­na­tion cards do not make their way in­to gov­ern­ment of­fices.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced safe zones for a num­ber of pri­vate busi­ness­es in­clud­ing cin­e­mas, bars, restau­rants and oth­ers, al­low­ing ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to gath­er with­in lim­its with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 11.

At that time Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ex­plained that pa­trons would be re­quired to walk with their vac­ci­na­tion cards to be al­lowed en­try. But he al­so an­nounced then that the Min­istry of Health along with the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion would pro­duce dig­i­tal vac­ci­na­tion cards, with a pos­si­ble roll­out in four to six weeks.

It's now long over­due and there has been no ex­pla­na­tion on why. We are now in Jan­u­ary 2022, and still to see the roll­out of those dig­i­tal vac­ci­na­tion cards.

We hope this would hap­pen soon and that cards will have the rel­e­vant se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures to elim­i­nate scam­mers by ren­der­ing the fake cards use­less.

A stop must be put to those who fur­ther en­dan­ger cit­i­zens from a virus that is al­ready wreak­ing hav­oc on fam­i­lies.