People are getting COVID-19 vaccines in disguise to avoid negative reactions, says Missouri doctor

A doctor at a Missouri hospital says people dress up to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in secret so they don’t face backlash from family and friends who are reluctant to vaccinate.

Dr Priscilla Frase, chief medical officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, said in a video released by the organization this week how a pharmacist leading its vaccination effort told her about several people “who have tried to cover up their appearance “while getting the hang of it.

They even went “so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please don’t let anyone know that I got this vaccine. I don’t want my friends to know that. But I don’t want to have COVID. I want to get vaccinated, ”Frase said in the clip.

Frase told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the people she was talking about “had an experience that sort of changed their mind” despite what family, friends or co-workers think, “and they decided themselves that they wanted to be vaccinated.

“They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves,” Frase continued. “But even if they were able to make that decision on their own, they didn’t want to have to deal with peer pressure or other people’s outbursts about them, ‘Give in to everything.'”

Missouri has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the United States, with about 41% of its population now fully vaccinated. Public health experts and scientists have said all vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Daily infections in the state have increased over the past week amid the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus.

Watch the CNN interview here.