Covid-19: ‘”Shun misinformation, get vaccinated”, urges US health chief Dr. Murthy

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: U.S. Surgeon-General Dr. Vivek Murthy, an Indian-American who lost 10 family members in the two countries to the pandemic, has said that misinformation about the Covid-19 poses an “imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health” and condemned the spread of what he called “common myths” by those refusing to be vaccinated.

He said that online misinformation, particularly the one that encouraged vaccine hesitancy, threatened to prolong the pandemic at a time when the Delta variant continues to spread across America.

So far, only 160 million Americans have been vaccinated, Dr. Murthy, 44, said.

Vaccination rates in the U.S. have become increasingly divided along party lines. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that 93 percent of Democrats said they were vaccinated or would be getting the vaccine, while only 49 percent of Republicans said the same.

The US has the highest coronavirus case tally in the world at more than 33,974,200 and also the highest death toll at over 608,300.

Nearly 48.5 percent of Americans are vaccinated. However, the US has missed benchmarks set by the Biden administration. The country failed to meet the goal of having 70 percent of adult Americans with at least one shot by July 4.

Demand for vaccines has also been slowing in the country, while daily infections have doubled in the past few weeks, with an average of roughly 24,000 cases per day, according to NBC News, media reported.

“Millions of Americans are still not protected against Covid-19, and we are seeing more infections among those who are unvaccinated,” he said at a press briefing in the White House on Thursday, urging the US masses to get vaccinated at the earliest.

“What we know from polls is that two-thirds of unvaccinated people either believe common myths about the Covid-19 vaccine or think some of those myths might be true,” he said, citing a recent  Kaiser Family Foundation survey. “Myths like you can get Covid-19 infection from the vaccine itself, which is absolutely not true.”

Dr. Murthy also announced the release of an advisory titled “Confronting Health Misinformation,” a 22-page document that lists ways individuals, educators, health professionals, journalists, technology platforms, researchers, foundations, and governments can counter the spread of Covid-19 myths.

It comes at a time when the Delta variant of the coronavirus is spiking in under-vaccinated areas of the USA and 99.5 percent of deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. are occurring among the unvaccinated.

He urged people to double-check the credibility of sources before sharing information on social media, saying that “not sharing is caring” in the case of scientific misinformation. He also asked technology companies to “operate with greater transparency and accountability” when it comes to monitoring disinformation being shared on their platforms.

“On a personal note, it’s painful for me to know that nearly every death we are seeing now from Covid-19 could have been prevented. I say that as someone who has lost 10 family members to Covid-19 and who wishes each and every day that they had had the opportunity to get vaccinated,” Dr. Murthy said.

“I see that also as a concerned father of two young children who aren’t yet eligible for the vaccine, but I know that our kids are depending on all of us to get vaccinated to shield them from this virus,” he added.

“Every week, I talk to doctors and nurses across the country who are burning out as they care for more and more patients with Covid-19 who never got vaccinated, all too often because they were misled by misinformation”, he said.

“We must confront misinformation as a nation. Every one of us has the power and the responsibility to make a difference in this fight. Lives are depending on it,” said the top American doctor, media reports said.

“But we are not out of the woods yet. Millions of Americans are still not protected against Covid-19, and we are seeing more infections among those who are unvaccinated,” he said.