Gov. Kathy Hochu has executed a new state law. On Wednesday, the law codified the falsification of COVID-19 vaccination records, such as vaccination cards, as a crime in the state of New York.
The law comes amid the rapid uptick of the omicron variant, which has become the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S.
As the holidays approach, there will likely be an increase in COVID-19 infections, and now several cities and state officials in the Northeast have placed mask and vaccine mandates for indoor public spaces, Yahoo News reported.
There are reports of high-profile individuals–professional athletes and high-ranking police officers–falsifying vaccination cards or digital passports and the sale of fake vaccination cards even among the general public. This alone encouraged the New York law to explicitly prohibit those actions, Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, D-Bronx, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
“When we have a preponderance of fake vaccine records, that lulls New Yorkers into a false sense of public health safety and undermines the protections that vaccine requirements provide to everyone,” Dinowitz said. “This law will help ensure that New Yorkers are as safe as they can be from this virus while going to work or patronizing a business.”
The law is set to go into effect immediately.
The FBI also made a public warning earlier this year, saying that creating or buying a fake vaccine card is illegal at the federal level.
The new state law explicitly makes it a crime to make a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination card by changing the legal definition of a “written instrument,” for the purposes of New York’s forgery statute, to include a card distributed by a vaccine provider, complete with a date of vaccination and the type of vaccine administered, the outlet reported.
It is also a crime to create a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination passport
Both actions will be considered felonies under the state’s law.
“These new laws will help us improve our response to the pandemic now, crackdown on fraudulent use of vaccination records, and help us better understand the areas of improvement we need to make to our health care system so we can be even more prepared down the road,” Hochul said in a statement.
