When Vaccination Isn't Inoculation

 

"The Commission has established that AVN [anti-vaccination organization Australian Vaccination Network] does not provide reliable information in relation to certain vaccines and vaccination more generally."

"The Commission considers that AVN’s dissemination of misleading, misrepresented and incorrect information about vaccination engenders fear and alarm and is likely to detrimentally affect the clinical management or care of its readers."

NSW Health Care Complaints Commission

 

"The vast majority of practice nurses, practice administrators and GPs are absolutely focused on best patient care with dedication, with skill, with lots of knowledge – and are ideally placed to provide that care."
"Undermining a public health effort by issuing a false vaccination certificate or information actually affects all of us … and it’s something we can’t possibly condone."

"They might miss their opportunity to get one of the antiviral or monoclonal antibody treatments that are increasingly in play to treat the early effects of COVID, to stop it becoming a dangerous life-threatening disease for that individual."

Professor Mark Morgan, Chair of the RACGP Expert Committee – Quality Care (REC–QC)

Christina Hartmann Benz leaves court on Monday.   Credit:Nine News Perth

A couple of health professionals in Western Australia are at the centre of a scandal in a part of the world where COVID prevention is taken very seriously. The promotion of vaccination as a vital part of successfully evading mass outbreaks of the pandemic coursing through the international community, appearing to wane, then resurfacing with a vengeance, is of utmost importance to the country. Now, it has been discovered that a nurse -- administering vaccines in a clinic, married to a chiropractor, both of whom privately promote anti-vaccination theories -- choreographed pretense vaccinations to select people to enable them to be furnished with a vaccination certificate.

Christina Hartmann Benz fell under suspicion and alert medical practitioners where she worked began to watch her closely to ensure she was behaving in a professional manner. She has now been charged with fraud since she was discovered to have merely been covertly making a pretense of vaccinating people coming to the clinic; those people were her friends and her family. She had secured an agreement with the clinic that she could vaccinate both friends and family who arrived at the clinic routinely to be inoculated against COVID.

The plan appeared to work well, until one of her supervisors placed her under personal scrutiny and himself witnessed the fraud taking place. She had inserted a vaccine syringe into the arm of a young teen who happened to be the son of a friend of hers. The doctor who had entered the room into which she had ushered father and son, confirmed that the vaccine had not been dispensed from the syringe she discarded as used. Up to that point 51-year-ld Christina Benz had vaccinated some 25 individuals the weekend before. All, when they entered the clinic requested her service. 

Suspicions were aroused when each time a friend or family member arrived, she would enter a room with them, the door would be closed for 'privacy' -- a routine that none of the other health professionals engaged in. When the father of the 15-year-old boy attended the clinic the nurse made an effort to obscure the  sightline of the doctor who had entered as an observer. When the vaccination supposedly was completed, she discarded the syringe, and the dose of vaccine remained in place.

On inspection of the clinic's records, she was found to have entered another doctor's name to validate having dispensed the vaccine. The observing doctor took immediate steps to fire the nurse, and then called in the police, accusing Ms.Benz of contacting the father to invent a story that would support her contention that she had administered the vaccine. The father responded by returning to the clinic complaining that his son's arm at the injection site had become painful.

WA Police are investigating. (Image: AAP)

"The amount of people coming to that clinic specifically looking for her shows premeditation at the higher end of the scale", the doctor testified after the nurse was arrested on Sunday at her home, and held overnight in  custody. Bail was initially opposed citing concerns she could contact witnesses and former patients to foment stories that would support her protestations that she legitimately vaccinated those that she had not, but made a pretense of having done so.

As part of the investigation, it was revealed that she had made use of other doctors' names in filling out COVID-19 records of vaccination. Eventually, she was granted strict bail on the condition she not administer any more COVID vaccines, practise as a registered nurse, contact any patients or colleagues or use social media to communicate with anyone. She was given $5,000 bail with a $5,000 surety.

Both the nurse and her husband whom she had also "vaccinated", were linked to the anti-vaccination organization Australian Vaccination Network. Previously, the group had been under investigation related to information on its website and Facebook page, considered to be spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and the efficacy and safety of vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID.