Did Roman Prymula, an epidemiologist who advised the Czech government during the COVID-19 pandemic and briefly served as health minister in 2020, warn against COVID vaccines? No, that's not true: In a November 2023 interview, Prymula referred to recent studies indicating that combining COVID vaccines with flu shots could increase the risk of a stroke in elderly people but did not "warn" against coronavirus vaccines. He stressed that COVID vaccines provide good protection against severe disease and death, but added they might not be effective against long COVID.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on November 2, 2023. It showed a screenshot of an interview with Prymula with the title (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff): "Prymula warns against the Covid vaccination. It does not really help."
Comments under the video contained such statements (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff) as:
Finally, you told us the truth.
Clown, all of a sudden...
Well, I would not expect this from you, but if you last great...
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Nov 17 07:03:17 2023 UTC)
Roman Prymula is a Czech former military epidemiologist who served as health vice minister and also briefly as health minister amid the COVID pandemic in October 2020. He was the face of the fight against the first wave of the pandemic and an advocate of the strict lockdown measures introduced against the virus spreading. He resigned as health minister in October 2020, after the media caught him attending a private event in a Prague restaurant that should have been closed under the government's measures.
The headline of the article shown in the video misleadingly states that Prymula warns against COVID vaccines and says that vaccines don't help much either. This is not an accurate description of what he said during an interview -- referred to in the article featured in the video -- published on Tn.cz, the website of the privately held national TV channel TV Nova, on November 2, 2023.
Prymula is asked in the interview, whose content has been published as a Q&A, about Czechs' skeptical attitude towards vaccines. He says (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff): "But no vaccination helps much against long COVID, it protects against serious disease and death."
(Source: Screenshot of the Tn.cz article taken on Nov 17, 2023)
When asked about a CNN report on possible higher stroke risks in elderly patients caused by a combined COVID and influenza vaccination, he says (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff): "There are indeed experts discussing this topic. And I believe the conclusion will be that the current coadministration of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccine will no longer be recommended."
(Source: Screenshot of the Tn.cz article taken on Nov 17, 2023)
There are no other statements in the interview that could lead to the conclusion that Prymula, who in the past advocated vaccination against COVID, has changed his mind. He has talked about the benefits of COVID vaccines that helped stop the pandemic, such as here in June 2023. In September 2023, Prymula stated that he would likely get a fourth shot of COVID vaccine, once the upgraded versions against new virus mutations were available in the country.
