London, Jan. 9, 2021 (AltAfrica)-British police are hunting a fraudster claiming to work for the NHS and injected a 92-year-old woman with a fake Covid-19 vaccine, City of London Police has said.

Detectives are hunting the man who charged the victim in Surbiton, south-west London, £160 for the jab

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Police said it was “crucial” he was caught as soon as possible as he “may endanger people’s lives”.

It comes after the NHS warned people that no-one should be turning up at doorsteps offering a vaccine for payment, following a spate of fake text messages.

Under the current coronavirus vaccine rollout plans, people will be invited to receive the vaccine by their GP or healthcare provider.

Police said the victim allowed the man into her home on the afternoon of 30 December after he said he was from the NHS and there to administer the Covid-19 vaccine.

She said she was jabbed in the arm with a “dart-like implement” before being charged £160, which the man said would be refunded by the NHS

The desperation for covid jab is heightened in the country after United Kingdom recorded its highest daily death toll on Friday since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as London declared a major incident, warning that its hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed.

Britain has the world’s fifth-highest official death toll from COVID-19 at nearly 80,000, and the 1,325 deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test on Friday surpassed the previous daily record from last April.

“Our hospitals are under more pressure than at any other time since the start of the pandemic, and infection rates across the entire country continue to soar at an alarming rate,” Johnson said in a statement.

“The NHS (National Health Service) is under severe strain and we must take action to protect it, both so our doctors and nurses can continue to save lives and so they can vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as we can.”

A further 68,053 COVID-19 cases were reported – also a new daily high – meaning almost three million people have now tested positive for the disease in the United Kingdom, which has a total population of around 67 million.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, said hospital beds in the capital would run out within the next few weeks because the spread of the virus was “out of control”.

“We are declaring a major incident because the threat this virus poses to our city is at crisis point,” Khan said.

The designation of “major incident” is usually reserved for attacks or grave accidents, notably those likely to involve “serious harm, damage, disruption or risk to human life or welfare, essential services, the environment or national security”.

London’s last “major incident” was the Grenfell Tower fire in a high-rise residential block in 2017, when 72 people died.