Italian Man Gets Busted Using Fake Arm to Try and Circumvent COVID Vaccine
An Italian man went to great lengths to get his COVID certificate without actually getting the shot on Thursday.
The unnamed 50-year-old man is now facing charges of fraud after rolling up his sleeve to get the shot into a prosthetic silicon arm.
The fake arm scandal took place in Biella, a town close to Turin in the northern Piedmont region of Italy, after the nation announced massive restrictions on those who refuse the vaccine.
“After completing the bureaucratic formalities, including signing a consent form in front of a doctor, the man, aged 50, sat down and lifted up the sleeve of his shirt as he prepared for a health worker to administer the jab,” the Guardian reports. “Initially, the health worker did not notice anything odd, as the silicone looked similar to skin. But after taking a closer look and touching the arm, the medic asked the man to take off his shirt. His plan foiled, the man, who has not been named, then tried to persuade the health worker to turn a blind eye.”
Unfortunately, the nurse treating him, Filippa Bua, went to the media and the authorities about the incident.
“I felt offended as a professional,” Filippa Bua told La Repubblica. “The colour of the arm made me suspicious and so I asked the man to uncover the rest of his left arm. It was well made but it wasn’t the same colour.”
The man reportedly replied, “would you have imagined that I’d have such a physique?”
Bua added that “at first I thought I made a mistake, that it was a patient with an artificial arm.”
The man clearly made a good effort, but it was not enough.
“The promptness and skill of the health worker ruined the plans of this person, who will now have to respond to the judiciary,” Alberto Cirio, the president of Piedmont, said in a joint statement with Luigi Icardi, the regional health councilor.
