Anti-vaccine residents in a village in rural Guatemala have attacked nurses who were trying to administer Covid-19 jabs, holding them for seven hours, officials say.
About 500 people blocked a road and vandalised the team’s cars in Maguilá, in the northern Alta Verapaz province.
The 11 workers were released after police negotiated with the villagers, who destroyed about 50 vaccine doses.
Authorities say online disinformation is feeding resistance to the vaccines.
The nurses were “verbally and physically attacked” by the residents, who let the air out of the workers’ tires and destroyed the cool boxes storing the doses, the health ministry said.
“We were very scared because we had never been through something like this. We were just doing our duty,” a nurse was quoted by the statement as saying. “We tried to explain a number of times that vaccination is voluntary and that we did not want to force anyone, yet they didn’t let us [work].”
Local media report that residents rejected the vaccine because a villager who received a dose had developed side effects, which were interpreted as being health problems linked to the jab.
Experts say the most common side effects of the vaccines are pain or tenderness at the injection site. Some people have wider effects like fever, headache, nausea and fatigue, but they are usually mild and short-lived.
Gabriel Sandoval, the director of the provincial health department, told the Associated Press officials had previously encountered communities that rejected vaccination teams, but that it was the first time they faced such physical resistance.
“This was bound to happen,” he said, citing false information about the vaccines being shared on social media. “A lot of people don’t believe in the illness… There is a clash of cultures”.
In a televised address on Saturday, President Alejandro Giammattei urged people to “support and respect” health officials carrying out the vaccination campaign who were being “threatened, attacked and even kidnapped”.
About 2.5 million people, or 25% of the eligible population, have been fully vaccinated in Guatemala – one of the lowest rates in Latin America. To date, the country has confirmed more than 566,000 cases and 13,750 deaths.
So the BBC are reporting on an incident of physical resistance against this “covid” BS? Wow! Must be the tip of the iceberg & I’ll bet there’s a lot more going on than this one incident. Of course they have to make the villagers out to be the bad or ignorant people acting on “false information about the vaccines being shared on social media“. However, they themselves say “residents rejected the vaccine because a villager who received a dose had developed side effects, which were interpreted as being health problems linked to the jab“. “Interpreted” huh? No, that’s EXACTLY what side effects are – health problems linked to the jab! And they can cut the BS about them being “side” effects too – they’re fkn EFFECTS!
The most frustrating thing about ALL of this “covid” BS is that everyday in many ways they are telling people to their face how bad it all is but the dumb sheep just keep swallowing it all up & dragging all of us sane & healthy people into the slaughter pit with them! I’m starting to get really intolerant with that aspect of it all. One thing I find myself doing daily now is just calling out “BAAAAAA BAAAAAAA” to everyone I see walking outside in the open air with a mask on – no words, just constant & repetitive loud sheep noises. If they want to act like a sheep I’m going to call out to them in only sheep language!
Good for them Guatemalans! At least they got balls.
There’s probably way more of this than we know
MSM is an outright enemy of the people
Sadly so many are blind to it