Freezing your sperm before taking a vaccine sounds scary but do you really have to? The question came up recently in a health engagement in Niger state regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. A lot of questions were asked about how sure the facilitator, a health educator, was that after taking the COVID-19 vaccine, one would be able to give birth.

This question was echoed by other participants. The facilitator, Abubakar Kpantu, who is the Niger Immunisation Officer, admitted that he and his staff had been repeatedly queried on this by those who are eligible to take the vaccine. He later stated that the controversy was one of the causes of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the state.

Some pictures have been going around on WhatsApp asking men to freeze their sperm and women to freeze their eggs before embarking on receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. One of the pictures received by the Reporter is shown below:

VERIFICATION

Using the Google Reversed Image, it was shown that the picture was a screenshot taken from some articles while further search showed that it may have first be written by local10.com in its article titled ‘Study investigates effects of COVID-19 vaccine on male fertility’ on December 20, 2020, with bylines of Kristi Krueger, Anchor/Health Reporter and Kathleen Corso, Special Projects Producer.

Google Reverse Image Search is a part of Google search that allows one to search the internet using images instead of writing words. By sharing a specific image with your search engine, it will go on to find others like it.

In the article referred above, it was stated that The University of Miami was investigating the possible effects of the coronavirus vaccine on male fertility and advised participants to have a fertility evaluation before receiving the vaccine.

It concluded with these words: “To protect fertility, some men may want to consider freezing their sperm before vaccination.” It is weird they are talking about ‘the vaccine’ in this article because as at 2020, the vaccine was still in its testing/early stage.

Digging deeper and going online using Tweetdeck and Who Posted What, there were trends of posts that retweeted and shared the articles and some people may have screenshot it to start sharing on WhatsApp.

One of the tweets seen with handle @michellemalkin who is a syndicated writer and vaccine skeptic showed that her tweet was retweeted 8,226 times with quote tweets of 2,001 times. But why the post which was tweeted in 2020 and the article which was written in 2020 and shared recently in 2021 showed that anti-vaxxers may want to dissuade people from taking the vaccine, a situation which is already been seen to be causing vaccine hesitancy

This is because in 2020 ‘the COVID-19 vaccine’ was still in its trial/early phase but now, there is a much larger body of data on the fertility and the vaccine: majority of which points that basically, there is no impact on fertility, and even pregnant women are advised to take the vaccines.

Using Hoaxy to view the network of misinformation about the flow of the information in the last seven days, from 19th to 24th May, it was observed by this Reporter that majority of the posts tweeted and retweeted were by governments and the country’s centre for diseases control explaining that the vaccine does not affect fertility in men and women.

WHERE DID THE INFERTILITY MYTH/CONTROVERSY START?

In 2020, a former vice president of Pfizer, Michael Yeadon, alongside some other persons wrote a petition to Europe’s medicines regulator demanding that the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials should be stopped. They speculated that the vaccines could cause infertility in women.

EXPERT’S VIEW

The Medical Director and Chief Consultant Obstetrician and Gynecologist of Queens Specialist Hospital, Abuja, Dr Martins Oche Ejembi, explained vaccines are supposed to provide immunity against one or several diseases and in the COVID-19 vaccine, the vaccine is supposed to provide immunity against the COVID-19 virus.

According to him, the COVID-19 virus itself can affect the fertility of both male and female explaining that in the male, it affects the testicles, causes sperm problems in terms of movement, morphology, swimming ability and ability to fertilise.

“So also with the women, COVID-19 affects the ovaries where the eggs are produced. In a way, acute infection of COVID-19 can lead to infertility in both men and female because the egg is part of the process that reproduces for the woman and the sperm for the man. And when they come together, they form a zygote which transforms into a baby. So when all these organs involved in reproduction are affected, it affects fertility. ”

For the COVID-19, Ejembi said: “The vaccine is supposed to prevent serious infection when taken. It is supposed to help stop the progress of COVID-19 in the body. We know that the virus itself can in a way attack fertility.

“COVID-19 studies have shown that COVID-19 has been seen in vagina fluids, in semen and it travels fast to the reproductive organs, so we know that at that level, it can affect fertility organs but the vaccine which is supposed to contra or to fight the virus itself cannot be said to be causing infertility.”

The Obstetrician and Gynecology Specialist further said that studies on the COVID-19 vaccine have reassured that the vaccine in question has no immediate effect on fertility adding that “It is, however, too early for us to be able to say that the vaccine affects fertility. The rumour circulating that the vaccine is meant to reduce our population is far from the truth. For now, we don’t know what the long term effect of the vaccine would be on reproductively.”