2On March 24, Facebook user Giorgi Mamisashvili published the post with the inscription “In the near future, protect your children from poisonous vaccination; they will start without parental permission”. According to the author of the post, vaccination in schools will start without parental permission; the post has screenshots from ese.ge article attached. Ese.ge’s article has the following headline: “Be Sure to Share, Why and Which Students in Schools will Get Vaccinated.” The aforesaid article of ese.ge was shared on March 24 by another Facebook user Nina Marji who wrote: “SOS…they’ve reached children! Vaccination will start in schools! Fascism continues! Be dormant, nation….)))))”.
Ese.ge published the text from the August 2019 article without indicating the date, the text is actually about prophylactic vaccination, however, in times of COVID-19 vaccination that recently launched in Georgia, the headline of the article and text given in the posts give the impression that COVID-19 vaccination will start in schools without parental consent.
Text identical to Ese.ge article was first published online long before coronavirus, on August 21, 2019, on Mshoblebi.ge. The same day progressnews.ge published the same article based on mshoblebi.ge.
The article provides information on routine vaccination for students in schools. The article emphasizes that those students who haven’t fully received routine vaccination will get vaccinated in schools under the monitoring of the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC). The article mentions the statement from the Ministry of Health, which says that last year various measures had to be implemented because of a measles outbreak. It also notes that a parent who wants to refuse universal vaccination has to provide the respective document for it.
Text identical to 2019 article of mshoblebi.ge disseminated on August 11, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, the article was published by Tvalsazrisi.ge, and several click-bait webpages such as ntv.ge and netsport.ge. Similar to ese.ge, texts don’t indicate a real date or the source.
User Mariam Timoshenko shared ntv.ge article in few public groups on August 28, 2020.
Maria Timoshenko is a fake account who stole the identity of Spanish model Natalia Barulich.
Due to the sensational nature of the title and the article, as well as the fact that it was published without indicating the real date of the statement from the Ministry, it gave the impression that COVID-19 vaccination was about to start in schools even back in August 2020.
As for the ese.ge article, even though the article doesn’t show the publication date, it started to disseminate on Facebook on March 24, 2021. Giorgi Mamisashvili and Nina Marji, the users who shared the article, mostly publish anti-vaccine information and the accounts frequently have disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines following the vaccination rollout in the world. That is why, spreading the information without the explanation gave the impression that mandatory vaccination in schools would start without parental permission, despite the fact that there is no mention of the COVID-19 vaccine in the ese.ge article or the texts given in the posts.
- Is any vaccine mandatory for students in school?
The May 20, 2020 order by the Ministry of Health determined the infectious diseases, for which prophylactic vaccination is mandatory, as well as the age group, which should receive the vaccine.
Mandatory prophylactic vaccines include Hepatitis B, tuberculosis (TB), Tetanus-diphtheria, diphtheria-whooping cough (pertussis), pneumococcal infection, rotavirus, measles, rubella, mumps, and human papillomavirus (HPV). Even though vaccines against the listed diseases are mandatory parents can refuse them. Parents can fill out the official form designed for it and provide it to the respective structure. The form lists all the risks for unvaccinated individuals and by signing the form, the parent confirms that she /he understands and is aware of risks.
The list of diseases that require mandatory vaccination does not mention coronavirus. Numerous statements have been made about the voluntary nature of COVID-19 vaccination. Information about COVID-19 vaccination being mandatory in Georgia has been previously fact-checked by “Myth Detector”:
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