By Bill McCarthy – Politifact
Canadian public health officials debunked a viral video claiming that a COVID-19 vaccine sent a 13-year-old girl from Nova Scotia to the hospital from sudden heart problems. However, the video continued to spread on Instagram and other social networks.
“My daughter just contacted me from school, very concerned that one of her friends is in intensive care at the hospital here in Halifax, because her heart stopped right after receiving a vaccination,” says a woman in the fake video of five minutes. “She is not feeling well at the moment. Can’t breathe. His heart keeps stopping. She is 13 years old, 13 years old and her heart stopped ”, says the woman.
The original video was removed from Facebook for violating its disinformation policies about the vaccine and COVID-19. The user who posted it deactivated his account on September 24. Versions of the YouTube video were also removed for violating company community guidelines.
[Respondemos 5 preguntas clave sobre el refuerzo de la vacuna contra el coronavirus]
The same clip appeared on September 24 on Instagram, where it racked up thousands of views before being flagged as fake. (Read more about the partnership between Politifact and Facebook).
Canada authorized the COVID-19 vaccine for children age 12-15 in May, and has also had to battle misinformation around injection safety.
The woman in the video did not provide any evidence to support her description of the events.. She made other false and misleading claims, such as that people “are dying all over the world from this vaccine” because “death is a symptom.” That is not true.
[Es falso que haya un mayor riesgo de aborto espontáneo por la vacuna del COVID-19]
“The video is false”said Dr. Joanne Langley, professor of pediatrics and community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Langley referred to a Sept. 24 report on the CBC news network..
When asked by the CBC about the original video, Nova Scotia Health Director Dr. Robert Strang said that what it said is harmful misinformation.
Strang explained that the case of a 13-year-old girl was never reported to the paramedics of the Nova Scotia emergency services, known as EHS, or to the IWK Health Center, the pediatric hospital in Halifax.
“If something like this had happened, there would certainly have been a call to EHS, and (someone) of that age would probably have been transported to the IWK,” Strang said. “Neither EHS nor IWK are aware of reports like that. And other information leads us to believe that this is a false story. It’s unfortunate that people are doing this, but nothing at all suggests that this is an event that actually happened … Where is the evidence that this actually happened? ”Strang wondered.
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PolitiFact contacted the Nova Scotia Department of Public Health to ask if anything had changed since Strang made his remarks on the news.
“We are aware of this video,” said Marla McInnis, spokeswoman for the province’s health and welfare department. “To date, there have been no reports to Public Health, EHS or IWK about this incident. Misinformation like this (the fake video of the woman) can be very harmful and is very worrying for all of us, ”he explained.
Because there is no evidence to support what is said in the video, we rate it as false.
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