Barbados: Visitors bringing fake test results, vaccination certificates

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Barbados Minister of Health and Wellness Colonel Jeffrey Bostic has revealed that Some visitors to Barbados have been presenting bogus vaccination certificates and COVID-19 test results to avoid quarantine

However,  he gave the assurance that those individuals have not been slipping through the cracks.

According to Barbados Today, Bostic confirmed there were individuals entering the island with forged COVID-19 related documents, but told Barbados Today that officials at the airport have been on the alert and have been able to stop the frauds in their tracks.

“Yes, we have been seeing this [forged vaccination certificates]. We have been seeing false test results as well, and things coming from labs that we do not approve,” he said.

“Our team at the airport, they are very vigilant and they have demanded that persons coming in, either with vaccine certificates or test results that we do not recognize, that they be tested and go through the normal procedures at the airport. So we know this is an issue but we are trusting our team at the airport to continue to do the very vigilant job they are doing,” he added.

Bostic also sought to give the assurance that adequate systems were in place to deal with the gradual and expected subsequent rapid increase in visitor arrivals to the island.

At the same time, he insisted that the responsibility of ensuring safety in the ongoing pandemic “rests with every single one of us doing the right things” and not just with visitors.

“Visitors will come because if they don’t, then that is another set of problems that we don’t want to see or have because we have experienced that before. We are doing everything possible at our ports of entry, and also by the COVID Unit going around and doing what they have to do,” the Health Minister said.

He said “the vast majority” of cases recorded here were among locals, adding that “COVID has been in Barbados for a long time and it has not left the country. What has changed in Barbados is how people respond and react to the protocols”.

“But yes, we as the Ministry of Health, we have a responsibility also in relation to visitors and that is why the protocols in Barbados, irrespective of where you come from, even if mask wearing is not mandatory or encouraged in your country, it is in Barbados and you will follow the protocols we have here in Barbados,” Bostic added.

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