ORLANDO, Fla. — A couple of younger Central Florida residents found a creative way to seek COVID-19 vaccinations intended for residents age 65 and over.
What You Need To Know
- Orange County Health Department official says 2 women dressed up as "grannies"
- People 65 and older eligible to get COVID-19 vaccine at Health Department sites
- Pino: There have been a "few" other cases of people misrepresenting themselves
Two younger-looking women “came dressed up as grannies” to the Orange County Convention Center on Wednesday to try to get COVID vaccinations, health official Dr. Raul Pino said Thursday.
“The bonnets, the gloves, the glasses, the whole thing,” Pino said at an Orange County coronavirus news briefing.
The women were seeking their second coronavirus shots, Pino said.
Pino said he lacked details on how they could have gotten first dosages but said the women carried valid Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination cards on Wednesday.
But “there were some issues with their IDs and their driver’s licenses,” he said.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office told Spectrum News in an email late Thursday that personnel from the Florida Department of Health in Orange County asked deputies to “issue trespass warnings to two women who arrived at the (Convention Center) site for Covid vaccinations, with dates of birth that did not match those they had used to register for the vaccines. The names, however, did match the registration.”
The Sheriff’s Office said it took no other action.
The women were ages 34 and 44, according to dates of birth that the Sheriff’s Office provided.
The Sheriff’s Office said it had no other information. “And we don’t have any information about whether they were wearing disguises or how they were dressed,” it said.
Pino, the health official, noted a “very high demand” for the vaccinations in Orange County, as elsewhere, and said “there have been a few” such cases of residents misrepresenting themselves in attempts to get vaccinated.
In another case, Pino said, a man with the same name as his father showed identification that included a different birthday than his father.
“They’re all different and creative,” Pino said of such vaccination attempts. “But we have access to a lot of information, so we can quickly verify who is who.”
He acknowledged that as the county seeks to vaccinate more people at a faster rate — announcing Thursday that officials aim to vaccinate up to 3,000 seniors a day at the Orange County Convention Center — “some people could squeeze in, so (such cases are) probably higher than we suspected.”