Ms He Ting Ru asked the Minister for Health (a) what action is being taken to verify that all vaccinations or Antigen Rapid Test (ART) results administered by the clinics linked to the alleged vaccine fraud case are accurate and for any discrepancies to be corrected in the relevant database; and (b) what action will be taken against patients who receive falsified vaccinations or ART results.
The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, MOH takes a serious view on the accuracy of vaccination records and Antigen Rapid Test (ART) results that are recorded and stored into our national systems, as this has a direct impact on public health and safety.
MOH had lodged a complaint with the Singapore Police Force as soon as our investigations against the alleged errant clinic detected false vaccination and false positive ART results. Both MOH and the Police are working closely to establish the false records in the clinical database. Investigations are ongoing but once the records are verified to be false, MOH will make the correction on our national systems immediately and these patients will have their vaccination or recovered status correctly recorded.
Patients who have obtained falsified vaccination status or false positive ART results and have had the false data uploaded to our national systems will also be referred to the Police for investigations.
Mr Speaker: Ms He Ting Ru.
Ms He Ting Ru (Sengkang): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his reply. I think the second part of my question which relates to whether any further action will be taken against patients who have been found to have approached these doctors for false ART test results and vaccination records has not really been answered.
On the second part of my supplementary question, I would like to know whether there have been any proactive investigations carried out by the Ministry to find out if any other clinics are carrying out these false certifications, how many of these have been carried out and whether any other irregularities have been found.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, I thank the Member for her question. The short answer is that we are always looking at the systems that we have in place to gather information for clinical results and information that is useful for us to fight the pandemic and to secure our public health systems. So, some of these include audits, some of these are about how we look after the licence issuing governance processes of the professsionals at the clinical sites involved. But, so far, the system appears to be looking well.
Ministry of Health
15 February 2022
https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/sprs3topic?reportid=oral-answer-2695
Office of the Leader of the Opposition 