Doctored video of GG’s jab slammed

A doctored social media video, claiming that a bogus COVID-19 vaccine was given to Governor General Dame Sandra Mason, was roundly condemned on Friday, with a doctor on the COVID-19 frontline on Friday pleading with Barbadians to stop spreading disinformation.

Dr Rhea Corbin-Harte, Client Relations and Activities Coordinator at the Harrison’s Point coronavirus hospital urged people to avoid seeking medical information from social media hearsay and instead always use vetted medical sources.

Describing the vaccination which involves the use of different needles, Dr Corbin-Harte said that using a smaller needle on a patient, compared to the one used to extract the vaccine from a vial, is common medical practice.

She said: “Needles are changed for three reasons, one is size – larger needles [are] used to draw out the medication, and smaller needles are used to inject the patient to reduce trauma. The other reason would be sterility after you have drawn up the medication through the bottle that is considered now not fully sterile, so you change to a new needle to be 100 per cent sterile when injecting the person.

“The third reason, is that we want a tip that is 100 per cent sharp, because contrary to popular belief, the sharper the tip, the less trauma you get, and the less it hurts.”

In the latter parts of the viral video, which claimed that the attending nurse hid the needle from view after delivering the shot to Dame Sandra, Dr Corbin-Harte again explained that the practice was for medical safety.

“We are taught to not have a needle in [the] open air, to reduce the chance of sticking someone else, yourself, or the patient again in error.”

Mirroring comments from other health professionals, Dr Corbin-Harte advised people to seek their medical advice from trained personnel and institutions, who would give them the best advice based on science, and not what is simply posted and shared on social media pages.

She urged: “Try to make sure your information is from reputable sources. When videos, articles, or any other information comes out and it is from a reputable source, they usually do indicate their name. So they would either say CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) and the year or month, something. If you have a video that comes out and it has no signage on it, you have to really wonder how reputable it is.”

The Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS) which released the original video of Dame Sandra’s vaccination, also strongly condemned the video’s manipulation. It urged people to desist from spreading dangerous misinformation and “not to deliberately and mischievously mislead others to further their own personal agendas.” (SB)