Fact Check: Iceland has not banned COVID vaccines – Reuters.com

A headline shared online falsely claims that Iceland has banned COVID-19 vaccines and cites sudden deaths for which there is no evidence, according to the Icelandic national health authority.

Iceland has not banned COVID vaccines and there are no soaring sudden deaths, Gurn Aspelund, chief epidemiologist at the Icelandic Directorate of Health, told Reuters in a Nov. 29 email.

Social media posts on platform X (archived), formerly Twitter, and on Facebook (archived) from Nov. 25, 2023, shared the headline from the Newsaddicts website, which in turn credits a Nov. 20 blog post as its source for saying the shots were banned.

However, no such announcement of a ban can be found on the Directorate of Health of Icelands website and no reliable independent news reporting supports the claim.

Iceland is currently using the newly updated vaccine Comirnaty XBB.1.5/Pfizer, Aspelund said, adding that COVID vaccination for 2023 fall/winter is recommended for those with medical indications, including all individuals 60 years of age and older, individuals 5 years and older with underlying conditions or as recommended by their physician, as well as healthcare workers.

The blog post suggesting that COVID vaccines were "removed" offers no evidence other than quoting (archived) a Nov. 17 Icelandic newspaper article, which the blog translates as saying: Next week, the public will be able to get an influenza vaccination at the health center, but not Covid vaccination at the moment.

In response to a request for comment sent by direct message, the blog post author said: "I don't know who makes the claim that Iceland is banning covid EUA countermeasures, in my substack article I described precisely what was announced in Iceland and provided clarifications made by my friend, the local journalist who called health officials."

In 2021, Iceland along with other Scandinavian countries temporarily discontinued giving some COVID vaccines to younger adults. But the Health Directorate said in a May 1, 2023, statement that two updated bivalent vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech's Comirnaty and Moderna's Spikevax, will be available to adults for primary vaccinations.

As of Oct. 5, 80.5% of the population (archived) in Iceland has received the primary course, that is two doses of a COVID vaccine. The latest information on COVID and vaccination can be found in Icelandic and English online.

(Updated on Nov. 30 with comment in paragraph 7 from author of blog post)

VERDICT

False. Iceland has not banned COVID vaccines and vaccination is recommended for specific groups of the population.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.

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Fact Check: Iceland has not banned COVID vaccines - Reuters.com