COVID vaccine efforts in immigrant communities include debunking rumors – By Paradise Afshar (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) / July 31 2021
Misinformation about COVID-19 has been spreading since the onset of the pandemic — and the immigrant community has been inundated with false narratives about the virus and the vaccines to treat it.
Social media channels, such as WhatsApp and Facebook, have become breeding grounds for inaccuracies, as memes, fake news articles and fabricated posts are easily spread. A 2018 study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found fake news stories about 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than true stories.
Health care providers are trying to combat the waves of misinformation through campaigns like the World Health Organization’s EPI-WIN initiative, which is designed to produce easy-to-understand graphics about the pandemic. Locally, health care systems throughout metro Atlanta are combating misinformation with community outreach programs and educational campaigns available in multiple languages.
“There’s a lot of mistrust,” Diana Ptacek, a medical interpreter at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, said. “We try to educate people when they come in and ask them if they’ve been vaccinated. We talk when they’re here, and especially to the Latin community because they were hit hard with COVID. We did a video in Spanish to play for patients in waiting rooms.”
