Nicki Minaj's claim that a man in Trinidad suffered from swollen testicles after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has naturally been dismissed as "false
" by the island nation's health minister.
Trinidad and Tobago Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh addressed the kerfuffle which ensued after the Trinidadian rapper shared the ludicrous claim with her 22.6 million Twitter followers.
Minaj had tweeted that her cousin in Trinidad was refusing to get the vaccine because his friend had become impotent after being vaccinated: "His testicles became swollen," she had written on Monday. "His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding
."
Mr Deyalsingh said "One of the reasons why we could not respond yesterday in real-time to Miss Minaj is that we had to check and make sure that what she was claiming was either true or false.
"Unfortunately, we wasted so much time yesterday running down this false claim."
Minister Deyalsingh said: "There are a number of myths that fly around, some of which are just clearly ridiculous and some of which are clearly designed just to scare. That happens to be one of them. That is untrue."
America's top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci had added: "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."
Also on Wednesday, Minaj tweeted that she had been invited to the White House to discuss her vaccination claims, confirming also that would be goin.
But the White House said the rapper had only been offered a phone call with one of the Biden administration's doctors to address her questions.
