Time to crack down on fake vax cards

Long Island’s anti-vaccination movement has spread in recent years like a bad fever and now threatens our public health. It has opened the door for bad actors who would break existing laws by falsifying vaccination records and put vulnerable people’s health at risk.

During the COVID-19 crisis, several instances of fake vaccination cards were reported, prompting the state to make such an action a crime. Last year, the Amityville owner of Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare was criminally convicted of falsifying thousands of COVID vaccination records. Such illegal actions, often fueled online by misleading anti-vax rumors, undermine the government’s efforts to combat the potentially deadly disease that has cost many lives and countless taxpayer millions.

But the recent case of a Nassau County midwife fined $300,000 by the state Health Department for falsifying immunization records for almost 1,500 children — mostly from Long Island — shows how much this brazen practice of fakery seems to have spread. Authorities say licensed midwife Jeanette Breen gave students “oral pellets” from a mail-order homeopath, then claimed in records filed with the state that these students had been properly vaccinated for such serious diseases as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, varicella and flu.

Under long-standing state policy, New York students must show proof of such vaccination to attend school, a sensible approach that helps prevent the outbreak of disease. Because of Breen’s illegal action, some 670 students on Long Island need to be immunized properly before they can return to school. State health officials — and local prosecutors — must act vigilantly against such misguided and illegal actions if public health is to be safeguarded during this disruptive wave of anti-vax fever. One warning sign: Suffolk this month reported 108 cases of whooping cough, primarily among school-age children, compared to a total of four cases in all of 2022.

One important step would be to pass legislation in Albany to create a state database augmenting the current statewide immunization system that would help spot bad actors like Breen when they begin filing questionable immunization records. It would allow health officials to track the number of exemptions from standard vaccination procedures claimed by each health care provider, setting off alarm bells for those who write them with unusual frequency. A similar system has worked to detect doctors who overprescribe opioid drugs.

But local prosecutors such as Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly should prosecute if there is evidence of illegality. State health officials are focused primarily on ending public health threats from bad actors like Breen, and offer fines to settle the matter. But prosecuting brazen efforts to falsify immunization records could become a strong deterrent.

Parents and school officials susceptible to anti-vax pressure should be made aware once again of how seriously such actions endanger innocent children. We all must be better guardians against this outlandish risk.