Trinidad health minister rejects Nicki Minaj’s vaccine ‘swollen testicles’ claim
Trinidad and Tobago health minister Terrence Deyalsingh has denied the claim by American rapper Nicki Minaj that a person on the Caribbean island had suffered swollen testicles after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.
Trinidad-born Minaj sparked an international furore when she alleged on Twitter that her cousin in Trinidad refused to get a vaccine because his friend became impotent after being vaccinated.
“His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding,” Minaj, who has 22.6-million Twitter followers, said on Monday.
The comments triggered an international backlash, with senior US and British coronavirus officials condemning the claims.
Deyalsingh also denounced the statement by the Grammynominated artist as a waste of time.
“One of the reasons we could not respond yesterday in real time to Miss Minaj is that we had to check and make sure what she was claiming was either true or false,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we wasted so much time yesterday running down this false claim.”
When asked about Minaj’s tweets, Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, said there was a lot of misinformation on social media.
“I’m not blaming her for anything, but she should be thinking twice about propagating information that really has no basis as except a one-off anecdote, and that’s not what science is all about,” he said.
Minaj said in a separate tweet that she had not been able to complete enough research of her own on the Covid-19 vaccines to get one in time for the Met Gala, a starstudded fundraiser for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Later, Minaj added that she would get vaccinated to be able to tour.