Covid Australia: Legitimate vaccination information is mistaken for scams

Australians are so confused about the ever-changing vaccine advice that 90 per cent of complaints about jab scams are from genuine announcements.

Ninety per cent of vaccine-related complaints to ACCC-run Scamwatch in June turned out to be from ‘legitimate’ advice about AstraZeneca or Pfizer jabs.

The service received 108 reports pertaining to Covid vaccines, however 101 of them were deemed to be genuine information from nonfraudulent websites.

Sydneysiders under 40 said they didn’t have to undergo eligibility questions on Facebook and WhatsApp in order to book a Pfizer vaccine.

How the links became assessable to the general public isn’t known, but cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt said some links have URLs that are not ‘consistent with what we’d expect for a government site and are similar with patterns seen in phishing attacks’.

‘It is dangerous that links are circulating that don’t use government domain names. More needs to be done to make it easy to make sure the public understand the correct websites to use for vaccine registration,’ he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Alan Zheng, from Eastwood, said a link he and his friends used to book Pfizer said it seemed ‘too good to be true’.

‘The website seemed a bit strange and had no government domain name but the confirmation for the appointment was at a Liverpool vaccination clinic. When I called the COVID-19 hotline they hadn’t heard of the website I was using to book,’ he told the publication.

Mr Zheng cancelled his appointment and even thought about suspending his Medicare card because he was so worried the site was fraudulent.

‘If the site was legitimate it seems like it could have been designed in a better way,’ he said.

Scott Morrison announced a Friday crisis meeting with the states to try and get some agreement on what fully vaccinated Australians can do – including thresholds for lockdowns and travel exemptions for the fully vaccinated.

But just 7.9 per cent of the Australian population have had both shots of a Covid vaccine, compared to 46 per cent in the United States and 47 per cent in the United Kingdom.  

The Prime Minister hailed a ‘new deal for Australians’ as he explained the stages titled vaccinate, prepare and pilot; post vaccination phase; consolidation phase; and final phase.

The first phase involves halving the number of arrivals into the country to 3,035 a week until August 31 to help keep out the highly contagious Delta strain, while the final stage sees all restrictions lifted except for testing of unvaccinated arrivals.  

The pace of the plan – which will eventually let the country manage Covid like flu – depends on the vaccine rollout, with lockdowns eliminated once a certain percentage of Aussies have been fully jabbed with two doses.

‘I have made it very clear today what is on the other side. If we all get vaccinated then this all changes,’ Mr Morrison said.

‘The pathway we have agreed today gives all Australians encouragement and much needed hope in what has been a very difficult time.’ 

The plan was announced after 12 million Australians were locked down this week due to several outbreaks across the nation. 

Darwin ended its lockdown on Friday at 1pm after recording zero cases but Brisbane’s was extended until Saturday night due to two new infections.