Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) health minister said that misinformation shared on Facebook was the biggest threat to its COVID-19 vaccine plans, urging the social media giant to take steps to “stop it.”
Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the efficacy of vaccines are so entrenched that even frontline health workers are hesitant to get vaccinated, PNG Minister for Health and HIV/AIDS Jelta Wong told Jonathan Pryke, director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Program, in a conversation that was livestreamed yesterday.
“Facebook is our biggest conspiracy theorist platform,” Wong told the Australian think tank, adding that people should not rely on information on Facebook to guide their approach to vaccines. “Facebook has a lot of influence here. They’re supposed to have programs where they stop these types of things. Facebook must take responsibility of this and stop it.”
However, the company has been vocal about its efforts to take down COVID-19 misinformation, as well as promote public health and government accounts as credible information sources.
Wong’s comments came as false claims and conspiracies about COVID-19 and vaccines have proliferated on social media platforms during the pandemic.
The distrust in PNG is unusually deep-seated, local public health leaders say, hurting prospects of recovery for the nation where infections have spiked.
To dispel worries regarding vaccines, Wong, PNG Prime Minister James Marape and several other public figures took the AstraZeneca vaccine this week.
It was an attempt “to show our people, especially our health workers, who [have] a series of issues about the vaccine ... that we took it and we came out normal,” Wong said.
PNG, a country of 10 million people that was administered by Australia before gaining independence, has so far received 8,000 vaccine doses from Australia’s supply.
India has promised another 70,000 doses, while China has committed 200,000 doses for its citizens living in PNG.
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