By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor, Irish Mail on Sunday.
With rollout plagued by queue-skipping controversies, a new sting highlights how the system could be misused
THE HSE this week issued a second vaccination appointment to a reporter from the Irish Mail on Sunday who was posing as a healthcare worker.
The revelation comes as the Government’s jab rollout continues to suffer from queue-jumping controversies including vaccines being administered out of sequence at the Beacon Hospital and elsewhere.
Our reporter’s second vaccine appointment was issued this week, even after we informed the HSE about the online portal for frontline workers being open to abuse by imposters, and published a story about our first booking a week ago. As part of an investigation into the HSE’s vaccination portal, we first accessed the HSE’s COVAX portal for frontline workers, on February 10, and made two bookings in two different names using PPS numbers that did not match the names.
At the time, Siptu’s health division had been urgently seeking assurance from the HSE that the portal was strong enough to detect those seeking to manipulate the system.
Our initial test confirmed the system, put in place by IBM and global customer relationship management firm Salesforce, did not recognise the use of a PPS number which did not match the applicant’s name.
Due to the urgency of the situation, the valuable contract for the COVAX system, which has now suddenly been discontinued, was awarded without a normal tendering process, with the HSE so far refusing to say how much was spent, for ‘commercial reasons.’
Prior to publishing a story about the weakness of the system, on February 14, the MoS provided the details of one of our vaccine applications to the HSE press office to ensure no doses would be wasted as a result of our investigation.
We deliberately did not inform the HSE of our second booking to test whether the system would be foolproofed after our initial exposé.
It was not. And as a result of this second booking we received an appointment by text last week, to attend the Citywest vaccination centre. This confirmed the system had not been tightened up since our first story.
In this instance, we had posed as a frontline healthcare worker in ‘category 2a’, who was in a position to actively transmit the virus.
Specifically, we registered on the system as a member of HSE housekeeping staff in the CHO7 area.
Crucially, the booking confirmation, which we promptly cancelled, did not ask for work ID.
Then, having published this story last week, we received a second appointment by text and email this week.
This second appointment, for the AstraZeneca vaccine, arose from the named booking we had informed the HSE press office about prior to our very first exposé in February.
In this instance we had posed as a member of the medical dental staff at Mullingar Regional Hospital, using this reporter’s real name and an incorrect PPS number.
We received this appointment despite the small size of the hospital, the strong likelihood that all members of the dental staff are known to management and the fact that we’d told the HSE the precise details about this false booking more than a month ago. This time we were asked to bring photo ID and ‘where possible work ID’.
This suggests that once again we would have been able to attend without showing valid frontline worker credentials. As such, had we used real names and matching PPS numbers for our bookings, we would likely have easily been able to receive vaccinations.
This likelihood was confirmed this week as whistleblowers flooded our sister paper the Irish Daily Mail with complaints of their own experience. ‘I’m a frontline healthcare worker,’ one complaint read. ‘I was only asked where I worked and what I did and no ID asked. I think it tightened up a week or so after me but God knows how many were done before me.’
Another worker from the West said it ‘was common knowledge’ their local vaccination centre ‘were administering jabs without any evidence of eligibility apart from registration via the portal.
‘It seemed to be a free-for-all and the attitude around here was “everyone is doing it, why shouldn’t I,” the worker said.
Figures released to Sinn Féin spokesman for Health, David Cullinane, show the HSE does not know the occupation of one in four people who have received their first dose as ‘frontline healthcare workers’.
Meanwhile, the latest HSE figures confirm almost 220,000 frontline healthcare workers had received the first dose of the vaccine by March 22. However, there are just 80,000 frontline healthcare workers employed by the HSE.
Other private sector healthcare workers, such as private hospitals, private nursing homes, therapists, Section 38/39 organisations, GPs and their staff all count as frontline healthcare workers. The HSE has been unable to clarify how many people they think are eligible for vaccination in this cohort.
In response to our latest findings, the HSE last night said: ‘The link to the healthcare worker vaccination portal was made very widely available by the HSE to many tens of thousands of healthcare workers so, of course, you were able to log into it to book an appointment. However, when people turn up to be vaccinated they have to be validated and show that they are who they say they are. While there are reports that this has not happened in a small number of cases it is normal practice.’
However, the HSE statement erroneously stated that our reporter was ‘told to bring work ID’. In fact, the MoS was only advised to bring ‘photo ID’, and ‘where possible work ID’.
