Fake prosthetic arm: Italian dentist's stunt is addition to crazy ways to avoid Covid jab list

A bizarre incident has come to light in Italy where a middle-aged man tried to acquire a vaccination certificate by turning up at a centre with a fake arm.

The man, who seemed to follow the anti-vaccination campaign, spend hundreds of euros on a silicone prosthetic to avoid the shot. He had hoped the silicone mould covering his real arm would go unnoticed.

The nurse who was administering the vaccines told local media that when she rolled up his sleeve, she found the skin “rubbery and cold” and the pigment “too light”. She told La Stampa she could not see the man’s veins. “At first I thought I made a mistake, that it was a patient with an artificial arm,” she said.

According to La Repubblica, the man who tried to pull off the crazy stunt was a dentist, who had been suspended from work for refusing to get vaccinated. He reportedly even tried to coax the nurse to turn a blind eye.

However, he failed to fool health professionals in Biella and was reported to the police for fraud.

The incident came to fore a week after Italy announced new measures to contain the spread of Covid-19, including barring the unvaccinated from social, cultural and sporting activities.