3 to 10 years prison for those who falsify their vaccination card

As in other nations such as the United States, for example, which punishes scammers who sell the card to the unvaccinated with five years in prison, the penalty can be up to 10 years in the Dominican Republic.

Santo Domingo, DR

The coronavirus vaccination card, that piece of cardboard with the logo of the Presidency of the Dominican Republic, of the Expanded Program of Immunization (Pai), with a bar code, but lacking a quick reading code (QR), and other facilities that would allow any citizen to determine that the data contained therein correspond to the person who carries it, may lend itself to forgery.

It is evident the fragility of a card that will be required in closed public places, companies, commercial banks, schools, public transportation, and others from this Monday. But… don’t even try because this infraction carries penalties of up to ten years in prison.

For example, as in other nations such as the United States, which punishes with five years in prison, the fraudsters who sell the card to the unvaccinated, the penalty can reach up to ten years in the Dominican Republic.

Lawyer Carlos Salcedo explains: “A vaccination card is an act, a public deed insofar as it is issued by the Ministry of Public Health, therefore qualifying as a public deed, any falsehood committed by any person in that public deed, in that act emanating from the Ministry of Public Health, qualifies as a falsehood in a public deed and therefore as it contains a provision in the background and carrying obligations of them, in addition to prerogatives which is the back cover, are punishable by the penalty of three to ten years of major confinement.”

The attorney understands that the authority of the Public Ministry must be imposed here. Therefore, from the moment they find any person who falsifies a vaccine card, they must submit it “so that the surveillance, the general coordination that the Ministry of Public Health has for the defense of health and sanitation in the Dominican Republic is immediately respected, regarding Covid-19, the pandemic that has hit us so hard in the country.”

One person is in prison for this crime.

Last July, the Judicial Office of Permanent Attention Services of Santo Domingo imposed three months of preventive imprisonment on a young man accused of falsifying and selling COVID-19 vaccination cards at 500 pesos. The accused is Anthony Esterlín Martínez Sánchez, who allegedly made the cards in a photography studio in the Valiente sector of Boca Chica.

The fragility of the card

The fragility of the card is evident, and the few mechanisms that the places will have to determine the authenticity of the same. However, Public Health reported that it would deploy 1,200 inspectors to observe compliance with the new anti-covid measures contained in resolution 00048, which provides that all persons over 12 years of age will have to present their vaccination card—or a negative covid test—to enter the places as mentioned earlier.

Public Health should not publish the blank card.

Paradoxically and given how easy it appears to be to falsify a vaccination card, the same governing body publishes on its social networks a photograph of the blank card and with all the logos in color, to inform the steps required to seek a duplicate in case of loss.