NIH Director Dr Francis Collins Says It Is ‘Really Heartbreaking’ To See Other Evangelicals Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine Due To Misinformation, Urges Them To ‘Examine The Evidence’



[ad_1]

Francis Collins vaccine

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, receives his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health. Patrick Semansky-Pool / Getty Images

  • NIH Director Dr Francis Collins said more than 1,000 people die from COVID-19 every day.

  • In an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, Collins said most of those deaths were among the unvaccinated.

  • Collins called on his evangelical colleagues to review the evidence and get the shot.

Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, urges other evangelicals to get vaccinated.

In an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday, Collins said misinformation made evangelicals reluctant to get vaccinated. Calling it “really heartbreaking”, he urged people to look at the “evidence”.

“Let me make the plea here that if you are a Christian, or if you are someone who has not yet been vaccinated, hit the reset button on any information you have that makes you doubt, hesitate or fear.” and look at the evidence, ”Collins said. “The evidence is overwhelming, vaccines are safe, they are effective, they can save your life.”

A June survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 22% of evangelicals said they definitely won’t get the shot.

Collins told Acosta that there are still over 1,000 people dying every day from COVID-19, almost all of them unvaccinated and “therefore, this should not have happened.”

“Christians of all people are supposed to be especially worried about their neighbors and it is also a really critical situation where if you are not vaccinated you can be the one to spread this virus to a vulnerable person who cannot necessarily resist it, ”Collins mentioned.

Some Christians have argued that they cannot get the vaccine because fetal cell lines played a role in the development of the vaccine, the Associated Press reported.

The AP reported that the Vatican Doctrine Office said it was “morally acceptable” for Catholics to get the vaccine even though it was based on fetal cell research. Pope Francis has declared that not getting the vaccine is “suicide”.

Collins, who was director of the NIH for more than 12 years, announced last week that he would step down at the end of the year.

Read the original article on Business Insider

[ad_2]

Source link