Doctors Don't Recommend Injecting COVID Vaccine Into Genitals

Zach Rathner

Health

6th January 2021

Doctors Don't Recommend Injecting COVID Vaccine Into Genitals

The alleged study was never published (Getty Images).

The Claim

New research found that men should inject the COVID-19 vaccine into the penis, which would also increase penis size.

News posted on

Emerging story

As the COVID-19 vaccine begins to get administered across the world, rumors are beginning to circulate that doctors are recommending that men receive the COVID-19 vaccination injection into their penis, and that a new scientific study determined that receiving the vaccine could increase penis size.

Text

Description automatically generated

Users across social media continue to push this claim.

Misbar’s Analysis

The Misbar team has determined that the claim is false. We could find no record of CNN running a story of this nature, nor could we find a record of the alleged study that the story mentioned. Additionally, the image in the screenshot is from the website for the Kansas City, Missouri-area St. Luke’s Health System for an instruction manual for penile self-injection as a treatment for erectile dysfunction.

The doctor shown in the article is named Mohitkumar Ardeshana, a Claremont, California-based doctor of internal medicine. We could find no record of him making the claim.

The other rumor, which claims that the vaccine would increase penis size, is also false.

The alleged study comes from the New England Journal of Medicine. While the alleged study highlights research in both the “Background” and “Results” sections, the study also copied and pasted text from the “Methods” section from a different study published in the journal published in December 2020.

The “Methods” section for both the alleged penis size increase story, as well as the real study, both read:

“METHODS:

We initiated a randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 1–2 trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the rSARS-CoV-2 vaccine (in 5-μg and 25-μg doses, with or without Matrix-M1 adjuvant, and with observers unaware of trial-group assignments) in 131 healthy adults. In phase 1, vaccination comprised two intramuscular injections, 21 days apart. The primary outcomes were reactogenicity; laboratory values (serum chemistry and hematology), according to Food and Drug Administration toxicity scoring, to assess safety; and IgG anti–spike protein response (in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA] units). Secondary outcomes included unsolicited adverse events, wild-type virus neutralization (microneutralization assay), and T-cell responses (cytokine staining). IgG and microneutralization assay results were compared with 32 (IgG) and 29 (neutralization) convalescent serum samples from patients with Covid-19, most of whom were symptomatic. We performed a primary analysis at day 35.”

The study involving penis size was never published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Since the “Methods” section was found in a different study, we rate the claims as false.