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Singapore — The police have confirmed that a report was filed against Dr Kho Kwang Po, who recently wrote an open letter asking for a delay in vaccinating young people after a US teen died of heart failure after receiving his second jab.

Dr Kho is said to have made remarks online against Islam and Muslims, screenshots of which are being circulated on social media.

The police told The Straits Times (ST) that investigations are underway.

ST added that Dr Kho said on Wednesday (Jun 30) that he is unaware of the report filed against him. He also declined to comment on the matter.

In the screenshots from posts from Apr 2019, Dr Kho is alleged to have said there is “nothing to love” about Islam and that there is “plenty of hate speech” in the Koran.

The context of some of these remarks seems to have been the bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday of that year, wherein over 200 people died. In his posts, Dr Kho was calling on Muslims to condemn the acts of violence.

Dr Kho, along with Cardiologist and Heart Specialist Dr Wong Wui Min, and a few other physicians, spearheaded the “urgent open letter” on Jun 26 to Professor Benjamin Ong, the Chairman of the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination and the copy furnished to the Minister of Health, “on behalf of many concerned paediatricians, primary care physicians, specialists, surgeons and GPs.”

The doctors highlighted that the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the death from heart failure after vaccination with an mRNA vaccine of a 13-year-old boy which was reported to US authorities on Jun 17. 

“While the CDC is initiating the investigation of a possible vaccine-related death of an adolescent male, can we possibly consider a short delay?

Let us give CDC and other organizations (worldwide) a few weeks to produce robust and convincing data. This is very important as our mRNA programme for boys is massive (at least 200,000, one of the most aggressive programmes in the world),” the doctors wrote. 

They also highlighted the incidence of myocarditis among young males who had been jabbed with mRNA vaccines in the US.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) responded on Sunday (June 27) saying that the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination (EC19V) is aware of the open letter from the doctors, which was posted on social media, but underlined that the benefits of getting the shots “continue to outweigh the risks of vaccination.” 

It assured the public that “The Expert Committee had on 11 Jun 2021 highlighted the possibility of a small risk of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with the second dose of the mRNA vaccines, and the assessment after our review is that the benefits of receiving the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks of vaccination. Data on myocarditis and pericarditis has not changed since, and the Expert Committee’s assessment remains the same.”

/TISG

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