AN AUSTRALIAN POLITICIAN has been accused of faking his Covid-19 booster shot on social media.
Images like this have been circulating on Facebook, saying Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan did not get the injection as he claimed he did during a press conference.
A meme circulating via Facebook asks “West Australian Mark McGowan gets the booster jab… or does he? Why is the orange cap on the syringe?”
The original image is blown up and zoomed in to show the apparent cap still on the needle between the medical practitioner’s fingers as she gives the injection.
But what’s going on in this close-up? Is that what’s really happening? Let’s take a closer look.
The Claim
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan faked his Covid-19 booster vaccine because the cap can still be seen on the needle in the photo.
The Evidence
Let’s start off with the photo. The same photo in the meme appears in an Australian Broadcasting Company story on 29 December 2021 when the Premier used his booster vaccination as part of a media opportunity. Camera crews and journalists were invited to the Kwinana vaccination clinic in Western Australia’s capital Perth where the Premier gave an update on an outbreak while receiving his third dose of the Covid 19 vaccine.
It appears the photo was then taken and began to be used in social posts throughout December and January in Australia and Ireland, claiming the injection was staged as the ‘cap’ still appears to be on the syringe when being put into McGowan’s arm.
The photo was taken by a reputable source and there is no evidence of digital manipulation. But what about that orange ‘cap’ that’s clearly visible? Well, it’s not actually a cap.
The Premier responded to the allegations on 29 December 2022 on his Facebook page, shutting down suggestions that the picture was faked by posting another photo ‘moments after’ the injection.
“Unfortunately a few people are wrongly suggesting the syringe still has a cap on and using this to develop random conspiracy theories,” he said in the caption.
The accompanying photo shows that the orange ‘cap’ is actually the part that connects the needle (the sharp, pointy bit that goes into the skin) to the syringe (the plastic tube that holds the vaccine). It’s not a cap at all – instead, it’s the base of the needle.
Other images of vaccinations in Western Australia show a needle with an orange plastic base including this one in the Pilbara News. As the photo demonstrates the orange component doesn’t cover the needle as a cap, rather it’s part of the needle at the base.
This type of needle is used across Australia. A vaccine management guide from New South Wales prescribes the ‘25G 25mm length Terumo LDS needle’ for use when giving Covid-19 vaccinations. According to a medical supplier website the 25g 25mm needle from Terumo has an orange plastic component at the base of the needle.
There are needles with an orange cap from the same manufacturer however, these are used as insulin needles. They are marked with ‘insulin only’ and this type of needle is not generally used for vaccines.
In further proof the needle wasn’t capped, news footage from Channel 7 shows the needle going into the Premier’s skin just before the two-minute mark.
The ‘orange cap’ wasn’t actually a cap and the needle is shown piercing the Premier’s skin.
We are calling this fake vaccination claim DEBUNKED.
TheJournal.ie’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say