PETALING JAYA: Social media influencers who have no background in the medical field are confusing the public by freely giving their opinions about Covid-19 vaccines, according to an expert.
Universiti Putra Malaysia epidemiologist Dr Malina Osman said these influencers act like medical experts and provide inaccurate information to the public, which could make the people wary about booster shots.
“The problem in our community is that there are people who are not qualified to talk about the (Covid-19) vaccine, but they are influential on social media and they act like they know everything,” she told FMT.
“Some of them have fabricated information while others have blatantly spread fake news.”
Touching on fears of post-vaccine complications, Malina said that while every medicine or procedure has its complications, such risks are extremely low.
“Do we decide to simply refuse vaccines just because there may be complications which happen to only a minority of individuals?” she said.
Malina was commenting on the low percentage of booster shots among the Malay community. In a Twitter post on Feb 11, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said that fewer than 50% of the community had been boosted as of Feb 10.
Khairy also said that 81.3% of Chinese and 56.4% of Indians have completed their third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine as of Feb 10.
Stressing that better communication is needed to convince Malays to get their booster shots, Khairy also advised the public to rubbish conspiracy theories regarding Covid-19 booster jabs on social media.- FMT
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