A video of a man crying out of fear while being administered an injection is viral on social media with a false claim that it shows Health Minister of Thailand, Anutin Charnvirakul moments before taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
The video shows the man screaming in fear as the health officials try to administer the injection; people around can be seen comforting him as he screams in fear.
The caption viral with the video reads, "Health minister of Thailand taking an injection."
Archive of the posts can be seen here and here.
The clip has also been tweeted by Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-born Canadian columnist and a popular figure among the Indian right-wing, who has earlier been fact-checked by BOOM for peddling misinformation. His tweet says, ''Fighting Covid19 one teardrop at a time.''
Archive can be seen here.
It is also viral on Facebook in Bangla with a caption that reads, "I am scared about injections! I'm kind of scared of injections! He is the health minister of Thailand again! The wretched COVID! May you be uplifted! I have to take it too!I'm scared to think" (Original caption: "I am scared about injections!আমিও এক রকম ভয় পাই ইঞ্জেকশনে!ইনি বেচারি আবার থাইল্যান্ডের স্বাস্থ্যমন্ত্রী!হতচ্ছাড়া কোভিড!তোর ওলাউঠো হোক!আমাকেও তো নিতে হবে!ভাবলেই ভয় করছে")
Archive can be seen here.
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The video was also sent to BOOM's helpline number for verification.
Fact Check
BOOM was able to ascertain that the video does not show Thai minister Anutin Charnvirakul administered a vaccine. We broke the video into its key frames and ran a reverse image search on a few frames, and found that the same video was posted in 2018 along with a compilation of other injection videos with a caption, ''Painful but funny ampules".
Further, we found the video on Hong Kong-based news publication South China Morning Post's YouTube channel. It was uploaded on February 4, 2018. The video is titled, "Chinese man scared of his first ever injection". The caption of the video identifies the man as a Chinese man getting an injection for the first time in his life and having a hard time with it.
BOOM also found a report published on a Russian website called Illithor Space, which included the same video stating that the video of the man taking injection went viral in 2018 on a Chinese social networking platform Weibo. This shows that the video is not related to the novel Coronavirus as it has been available much before the first case of the strain was reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China as recorded by the World Health Organisation. BOOM however could not independently verify the identity of the man or the source of the video.
Thailand's health minister
Anutin Charnvirakul, a Thai politician, is currently serving in the capacity of Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Health.
Photo of Anutin Charnvirakul, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health, Thailand (Getty Images)
According to reports, Thailand government has stated to start COVID-19 vaccinations in February 2021. The Health Ministry has intimated to start the vaccine drive programme in February by administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to high-risk groups. Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has stated that AstraZeneca would be supplying 50,000 doses of the vaccine initially. The Thailand government has been criticised for their delay in starting of the Corona vaccination. Charnvirakul has denied the same stating that they are going according to their plan and the first phase will begin on February 14 in which elderly and people with chronic diseases would be given priority.
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