Never bungle up spellings on vaccination cards.
A woman from Illinois was arrested in Hawaii and is now facing a year in prison after she was busted entering the Aloha State with a fake COVID-19 vaccination card.
The 24-year-old Illinois resident submitted a bogus vaccination card with a glaring spelling blunder that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled "Maderna," court records show. She has also been slapped with a $5,000 fine.
Authorities arrested Chloe Mrozak at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu on Sunday for violating the state's pandemic protocols, Gary H. Yamashiroya, representative for Hawaii's Department of the Attorney General, told USA Today.
According to Yamashiroya, Mrozak was "attempting to bypass the Hawaii's 10-day traveler quarantine requirement by submitting a fake vaccination card.
A woman who was arrested in Hawaii for falsifying her vaccination card in order to comply with state travel regulations appears to have written "Maderna" instead of "Moderna" on it: pic.twitter.com/DbeoPZCmFA — Ian Scheuring (@IanScheuring) September 1, 2021
This compulsory isolation program - as well as the islands being generally isolated - helped Hawaii's local authorities to keep its COVID-19 infections at bay throughout the global health crisis.
Mrozak uploaded a vaccination card to the state's Safe Travels Program (STP) and arrived in Honolulu on August 23 on a Southwest Airlines plane, records disclosed.
Screeners at the airport found suspicious errors... like "Moderna" was spelled wrong and that her residence was in Illinois but her vaccine was administered at Delaware," The Associated Press quoted Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Attorney General's investigation unit, as saying.
The faux pas led "Maderna" to start trending on Twitter Wednesday, with more than 14,000 tweets before noon Eastern Time.
Honolulu has now made in mandatory for anyone visiting theaters, bars, museums, food and other establishments, to show proof of immunization or a recent COVID-19 negative test result.
The penalty for falsifying legal documents or any proof of testing or vaccination for travel in Hawaii carries a fine of up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year for each count.
The woman was charged with two misdemeanor counts for violation of the state's emergency policies to control the spread of COVID-19.
She had been placed in custody on $2,000 bail until a judge determines her release at a hearing Wednesday and set another hearing in three weeks, the Public Defender's Office (PDO) said.
