AN East Renfrewshire woman has said she feels like she is being “held to ransom” by an error in her vaccine status certificate which means she can’t visit her son in Israel.

Retired teacher Linda Lovat, 71, is fully vaccinated against coronavirus but her immunisation details have been incorrectly recorded.

Mrs Lovat and her 73-year-old husband Mervyn got their first Covid jab at Carmichael Hall, in Giffnock, on February 13.

They were then given their second dose on May 4.

The appointments were arranged by letter, meaning they had unique usernames on the NHS Inform website that links patients to their vaccine status certificate.

However, when the couple requested copies of their certificates, they found that Mrs Lovat’s second jab had been wrongly recorded as a first dose, with no mention of the February 13 inoculation.

The certificate for Mr Lovat, who is a lecturer in business and finance at Glasgow University, was correct.

Mrs Lovat has repeatedly called the Covid-19 Status Helpline to ask for her details to be amended but has had no success.

“Over and over again I’ve phoned,” said the former French and Spanish languages teacher, who lives in Newton Mearns.

“One man said ‘I will create an event error case.’ Another said ‘I’ll create an escalation form.’ Both of these were in early July.

“When I phoned back again, somebody told me the escalation form system hadn’t gone live until July 17, so it had got lost. He raised another escalation form but nothing has changed.

“When I first reported it, the person I spoke to – the call handler – said ‘it’s a nightmare.’

“They could see on their system that I’d had the two vaccinations but, for some reason, nobody seems to be able to update the information that’s on the certificate.

“It’s like being held to ransom by an anonymous body.”

The Lovats had hoped to fly to Israel to visit their son, who they have not seen for more than two years.

Israel, which is on the UK’s ‘green list,’ is currently closed to tourists but is expected to reopen to fully-vaccinated visitors in August or September.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “While we have successfully issued thousands of Covid Status Certificates, we are aware that some applicants are experiencing problems and we are working at pace to resolve this.

“We continue to work towards replacing the record of vaccination status with digital Covid Status Certificates, which will include vaccination and testing data to be used for outbound international travel.”