Singapore — The Health Ministry says the group calling itself Healing the Divide has been instigating parents to go to paediatric vaccination centres and overwhelm the staff with questions.
So the ministry has reported the group to the police over this bid to disrupt operations at the paediatric vaccination centres that have been opened to take care of children’s vaccination needs.
The message from the group was reportedly sent on Dec 27, 2021
“Such an act will greatly disrupt operations at our paediatric vaccination centres, and amount to an instigation of harassment of the medical staff. It is a very serious matter, and MOH has therefore made a police report,” said the ministry.
The ministry further asked the public to “exercise social responsibility and not be misled by the promptings of the group, which has a history of sharing misleading information about COVID-19 and its vaccines”.
It underlined that Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority (HSA) as well as other regulatory authorities around the globe, have given approval to the Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech for children from the ages of five to 11.
“This is no different from how other drugs have been approved for use,” MOH added.
“Designated paediatric vaccination centres have been set up island-wide to administer safe vaccinations for children.”
Those who have questions about the Covid vaccine for children are encouraged to visit https://www.moe.gov.sg/faqs-covid-19-infection for more information.
Healing the Divide first made the news early last November when MOH issued a statement that content from the group had been removed from YouTube.
The ministry wrote then that the group “adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination.”
The ministry added that its YouTube channel “has a history of posting and sharing content that perpetuates falsehoods and misleading information about COVID-19 and vaccines”.
MOH also warned that the government will not hesitate to take “action against those who put the public’s health and well-being at risk by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines”.
Several weeks later, on Nov 25, the police said in a media statement that a 45-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man were being investigated for allegedly encouraging people to overwhelm public hotlines with feedback amid the ongoing Covid pandemic, including one belonging to the Health Ministry.
The man and woman were understood to be Ms Iris Koh, the founder of Healing the Divide, and her husband, Mr Raymond Ng.
The numbers that the couple allegedly involved in instigating people to flood included those that help the public with Covid-19, including MOH’s Quality Service/Feedback hotline, the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s (MSF) hotline, and the National CARE Hotline.
A few days later, Ms Koh posted a video on her Facebook account “to apologise for the ‘flooding’ comment”. She said: “Asking people to flood the call center for no genuine reason is definitely wrong.”
Ms Koh also said she replaced the word “flooding” with “the more generic ‘call’” in her initial announcement.
She then appealed for the public to “be sympathetic” toward those who cannot and do not want to be vaccinated “for various reasons”.
“Please forgive me if I did not handle this matter properly,” she said, after which she called upon those sympathetic to the group’s cause of “building a united Singapore” to step forward and join them. /TISG