There have been 'occasional isolated cases' where vaccination certificates have been issued to those deceased, or those not vaccinated at that time, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare acknowledged in the Lok Sabha on December 10. "These cases are due to inadvertent data entry errors by vaccinator in updation of vaccination data of second dose of beneficiaries," Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar, MoS for MoHFW, added. Pawar was responding to a parliamentary question by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee on whether the ministry was aware of vaccination certificates being issued incorrectly, in some cases to the deceased, and what it was doing to rectify the issue. Ghost vaccination certificates have been a longstanding issue with reported instances of Indians receiving certificates when they haven't gotten vaccinated. Earlier, in response to concerns around ghost/incorrect registrations on the CoWIN portal, National Health Authority (NHA) CEO RS Sharma said that the ministry was taking steps to prevent such incidents; but it appears that the problem has continued. What is the ministry doing about it? In his question, Banerjee asked about: The government's awareness of such certificates. Whether these were included in the number of total vaccinations done. Steps taken to rectify the same. The ministry did not answer the second question while on the third, it only said that "MoHFW has also advised States/UTs on multiple occasions to ensure correctness of data entry." Meanwhile, the director of the Indian Council of Medical Research Balram Bhargava said that these are 'anecdotal incidents' and reports of…
