No! Covid jab doesn’t give you ‘magnetic powers’

HYDERABAD:  Thanks to WhatsApp forwards, there is no dearth of fear and speculations about the Covid-19 vaccination and its side effects. Among these, recently, one viral video emerged as an entertaining clip at first, but quickly turned into a social media trend. It all started when a video went viral, wherein a man shows off coins and spoons getting stuck to his body and saying this started after taking the second dose of the jab. Now, more and more such clips of the ‘vaccine magnetism’ are flooding our social media feed.

Arvind Sonar, a resident of Nashik, had claimed that his body had turned magnetic after taking the vaccine and welcomed quite a bit of curiosity and amusement on WhatsApp and Instagram. However, others quickly copied this and now videos are being released from Jharkhand, Mangaluru, and Karimnagar too!

Dr Krishna Reddy Pingle, a consultant radiologist at Sunshine Hospitals in Hyderabad, calls this a strange phenomenon but dismisses the link between the magnetism and the vaccine. “Okay, I’m vaccinated, let me see if I’m magnetic — (he tries to stick a coin to his arm which falls off). See? This is a baseless speculation. Both the vaccines (Covaxin and Covishield) do not contain any metal ingredients in them to create a magnetic field in our bodies. The vaccines are completely safe,” he says.

Dr Nandana Jasti, a general physician at Medicover Hospitals, had similar thoughts on the video. “First of all, we do not know about the video’s authenticity. While the vaccine definitely doesn’t cause this effect, we must also realise that the source is very unreliable. In winter, you experience a little friction on your skin as you wear sweaters for a long period of time. There will be a similar reason for this phenomenon too, but we must wait for the local health departments to give a statement about this,” she says.

There is one thing that’s clear — vaccine magnetism is a hoax. Let’s wait for the researchers to explain this amusing phenomenon to us instead of creating more fear regarding the Covid-19 vaccination on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.