“Nasal swabs were being collected by a New Jersey-based marketing agency and then shipped to a Chicago testing lab, owned by a plumber and bar owner,” the outlet reported. Some sites may have taken Social Security numbers. In Philadelphia, more than 4,000 people took Covid tests at tents throughout busy parts of the city that were run by an organization that falsely identified itself as partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Image: A man gets tested for Covid-19 in the Times Square subway stop, in N.Y., on Jan.
The state normally uses about 50,000 rapid tests a week, but it is now guaranteed to receive only 11,000 a week. These convenient pop-ups come as several states have announced limited testing ability due to severe shortages, including Indiana, which limited rapid antigen testing to people 18 and younger and symptomatic individuals ages 50 and older. Some are charging for tests, when in most cases you don’t have to pay for them.įor some, they play on the convenience of “going right around the corner,” but as Covid cases continue to soar, “they're functioning on the fact that people are desperate,” according to Liu. Not all the pop-up clinics may be operating in a malicious way, Liu said, but some probably are, which is why Liu advised being cautious when thinking about going to any of these sites. “At the very beginning, people were knocking on doors, telling them, ‘We have vaccines.’ And now that we do have vaccines, I feel like the format of scams are transforming once again into something different,” Liu said. Marian Liu, a professor of nursing at the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University, said the pandemic has sprung all different kinds of fraud that have been based around people’s needs at the time. Since the pandemic began, the FTC has received over 650,000 reports of Covid-related fraud, identity theft and other scams, which have cost Americans over $636 million. (Liao Pan / China News Service via Getty Images) Image: A woman gets tested at a mobile Covid-19 testing van on 14th Street, in N.Y. “Scammers believe in supply and demand, too, so where there’s demand for tests, scammers will fake the supply.” “With increasing demand for Covid tests, people can expect to run across fake tests online and maybe even more of the fake testing sites we saw earlier in the pandemic,” Colleen Tressler, a consumer education specialist with the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection, said.
YAHOO WEATHER POP UP IN THE CORNOER CRACK
Pritzker described the testing spots as “fly-by-night” sites that are “an enormous problem,” before vowing to crack down on them. People who visited said they never got their results or they came in weeks after visiting. Conditions were being described as a “hellhole,” nonprofit news organization Block Club Chicago reported. Unsanitary sites were reported in Chicago with workers not wearing masks or gloves. It was shut down by police, who later urged anyone who visited the site to monitor their credit reports for fraudulent activity.Īt least two sites were identified in Baltimore, where state Attorney General Brian Frosh warned residents to be aware of "illegal, unlicensed pop-up COVID-19 testing sites” that were collecting personal information that could be used for identity theft. Louis, a Covid testing site set up at a mall parking lot and was asking people to provide Social Security and passport ID numbers when registering for tests.
Numerous illegal, unapproved and unsanitary sites have been cautioned by state officials nationwide. In the last few weeks, legislators and attorneys general in several states including Illinois, Maryland, California, Texas and Pennsylvania have said they will be investigating and introducing regulatory legislation overseeing these operations. Pop-up testing sites have cropped up on street corners, in parking lots and on shopping properties across the country, but health and legal experts say many of these are unregulated and could be rife for nefarious activities like identity theft. Image: Covid testing (Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images)
0 kommentar(er)
