Genia joins call to stop misinformation on Covid-19

PAPUA New Guinea-born rugby union player Will Genia has joined regional health experts to call out the spread of misinformation on Covid-19 and press the urgency of vaccine uptake across the Pacific.
The former Queensland Red scrum-half joined health experts from the World Bank and Marshall Islands’ health sector to discuss the Covid-19 vaccine and the need to combat misinformation across the Pacific and PNG.
Genia insisted that combating misinformation was key.
“Obviously, now with everything escalating in PNG, we have to take this seriously and dispel the misinformation and misunderstanding around the vaccine,” he said.
Genia, whose brother in Port Moresby had recently contracted Covid-19, is focused on the complexity of combating misinformation in PNG.
“It’s a very difficult thing to do with the language barrier around how many languages we have in our country, with communal living and lack of resources, it’s quite hard unless individuals take it seriously,” he said.