Girl Swindlers in Nurse Disguise Offer SARS Vaccine

The criminal world is making money on the public SARS phobia. Girls posing as nurses have visited several dozen households in Yerevan these days offering inoculations, a dollar a shot.

The more erudite of tentative clients turned the girls out, knowing from the media that a SARS vaccine has not yet appeared in the world. The more credulous eagerly paid.

No SARS prevention work is underway in Armenia now. The girls are burglars, suspects Ruben Vardanyan, chief doctor of a Yerevan-based outpatient clinic.

Not a single severe acute respiratory syndrome case has been registered in Armenia for now, the Health Ministry reassured on a number of recent occasions.