Police investigate After reports of vaccine ‘shots of Air’

Police in Rio de Janeiro launched an investigation on Wednesday into reports doses of COVID vaccine may have been diverted after images emerged of health-care workers sticking needles into elderly people without injecting them. Police appealed to local government and health officials to help understand what happened to the doses, intended for high-risk groups. At least three cases have been reported of what local media are calling “shots of air,” in which health workers administered fake inoculations from empty syringes. Videos on social media show health-care workers inserting the needle into people’s arms with the syringe already fully compressed. The personnel involved have been dismissed and the elderly people who got the fake shots were later vaccinated.