Image of an elderly woman taking the empty Covid-19 vaccine is being circulated in India with a false pretense. 

By Sahil Bali

A video showing a nurse administering an empty syringe to an elderly woman is being shared on WhatsApp warning people of vaccines not being administered properly. The video is also currently available on YouTube carrying the message, “vaccine not injected”.

We did a reverse image search on Yandex and found an article published in Goiás - a Portuguese news outlet on February 16, 2021 that confirms that the nurse may have made an involuntary error in her first attempt at administering the vaccine.

A translation of the news report reads, “The nurse who did not inject the dose of vaccine against Covid-19 in the first attempt in an elderly woman from Goiânia may have made an "involuntary error", according to the Municipal Health Secretariat (SMS)”. 

The report clarifies that there were no motivations to purposely administer an empty syringe, attributing the incident to an involuntary error. This image of an elderly woman taking the empty Covid-19 vaccine from Portuguese is being circulated in India with a false pretence of covid vaccination being administered.