More Than 3,000 Fake Vaccination Cards From China Seized At Anchorage Airport

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said Thursday that customs officials in Anchorage seized more than 3,000 counterfeit vaccinations cards from China. The cards had a close resemblance to the certificates handed out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency said the cards were of “low quality printing, and closely resemble the authentic CDC certificates provided by healthcare providers when administering the COVID vaccine,” the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Kymberly Fernandez, assistant area port director with the CBP in Anchorage, said the certificates were from China. A criminal investigation has been launched in relation to the case.

CBP spokesperson Jaime Ruiz revealed that the cards, which were received in small packages, were seized in the past week at international cargo freight facilities in Anchorage. All of the packages, between 135 and 150 parcels, were sent from the same person in China and were being distributed across the U.S., according to the Associated Press.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Memphis and Anchorage were among the busiest cargo airports in the country. The ports have also become major ports for shipping fake vaccination cards as the number of people refusing vaccination also increased. Just recently, 3,600 counterfeit cards were discovered at Memphis cargo facilities.

A new study from Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity firm Check Point found that the black market for fake cards has been very active as technology has made it easy for people to acquire them. Those with a Telegram account and some cryptocurrency have easier access to these cards, researchers said.

The research further found that there are more than 2,500 groups on Telegram that sell counterfeited vaccine cards. The said groups have over 100,000 followers. Since earlier this year, the follower figures of Telegram groups selling vaccination credentials also climbed by more than 566 percent.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to grapple with the highly contagious Delta variant as COVID-19 cases in the country have increased by nearly 18 percent over the last seven days, Axios reported.

The Delta variant has been dominant in the U.S. now and is spreading quickly through the unvaccinated population. Most of the case surge has been reported in Washington state, Washington D.C., West Virginia, and the Upper Midwest.

“We continue to see a rise in cases driven by the more transmissible Delta variant with cases concentrated in communities with lower vaccination rates,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients was quoted as saying by CNN.

"So this remains a pandemic of the unvaccinated," he added.

Alabama and more than 20 other states have yet to fully vaccinate at least half of their population. Among the states with the lowest vaccination rates are Louisiana, Wyoming, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, and Arkansas, among others, the report said. Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate at only 35.74 percent of its total population fully inoculated.

As of Aug. 19, 51 percent of the total U.S. population, or 169,592,873, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, CDC data revealed. Vermont has the highest percentage of its population vaccinated at 67.13 percent, followed by Massachusetts at 64.96 percent, and Maine at 64.81 percent.

Still, the U.S. has a long way to go with 37,294,291 confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic started and more than 625,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.