Paraguay publishes names of the vaccinated to stop COVID cheaters

The South American nation’s public database lists each person’s name, place of vaccination, type of vaccine and number of doses so citizens can see if someone skipped the line.

Low on shots and overwhelmed by the coronavirus, a country with one of the highest Covid-19 death rates is taking a novel approach to fighting vaccine corruption: publishing the name of everyone who gets a shot. For those who want to know if a friend, neighbor or member of Paraguay’s political elite are among the 400,000-some people with an inoculation, the answer is just a few clicks away on the Health Ministry’s website. There a public database lists the person’s name, place of vaccination, type of vaccine and number of doses. Scroll through and you’ll see ex-President Fernando Lugo got his first shot of Sputnik V on May 19 and Carlitos Vera, a well known Paraguayan comedian, received the Covaxin jab. “It’s a tool for citizen oversight,” Lida Sosa, a deputy health minister, said in an interview. “There were people who looked at the list and reported individuals who got vaccinated who” weren’t eligible.