Marcos Martínez Chacón from The Associated Press published on 6, September 5, 2023, that in a span of two weeks in late June, a total of 850 people died due to myocarditis in the city of Monterrey, in Mexico’s northeastern state of Nuevo León.
However, The Associated Press has stated that this information is False.
Authorities of the Health Ministry in Nuevo León told The Associated Press that it is not true that 850 people died of myocarditis during that period. The post containing the erroneous information distorts figures provided by a state official who in late June said there had been 380 cases of deaths due to myocardial infarction — or heart attacks — not myocarditis, a condition where the heart muscle is inflamed.
As authorities prepare to release an updated version of a COVID-19 booster in mid-September, some social media users are again spreading false and misleading claims about rare side effects.
For example, social media users have shared a video in which a woman claims that 850 people died in Monterrey due to myocarditis in “two weeks.”
“The doctors are coming out and speaking to the public because nobody in the government or in the media wants to address these deaths, they say it was because it was a heat wave and they had no idea why people were dying,” the woman says in the video. “These doctors have grown some guts and they’re saying that these 850 deaths in these past two weeks in Monterrey are due to myocarditis, straight-up myocarditis.”
Sonia Gómez, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry of Nuevo León, told The Associated Press it was not true that 850 people died due to myocarditis in two weeks in June.
Source: The Associated Press
