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NEW YORK—WebMD has launched the WebMD Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation Center to help combat vaccine inaccuracies with facts. The Center will provide reliable vaccine resources and online tools to help consumers make informed decisions, driven by science. The Center features articles and videos on topics including vaccine myths and how they take root, public health challenges, and the role of social media in misinformation. Medscape, a division of WebMD, will feature content and resources at its Covid-19 Resource Center, including vaccine overviews, late stage vaccine development updates, and news on vaccine research.

As WebMD noted in a story last week, the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation creates “a really powerful parallel pandemic to the real pandemic,” as Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in an interview with NPR.. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has tracked the links between vaccine misinformation and vaccine hesitancy during the past year.

Added John Whyte, MD, WebMD's chief medical officer, "While reports show increasing receptivity to getting a Covid vaccine, about 1 in 5 Americans still say they are not planning to get one, or would only if required. The issue of vaccine hesitancy is also of particular concern in communities of color, which have been disproportionately impacted by the virus."

WebMD and Medscape have also joined with corporate, nonprofit and media leaders in a global public service campaign called VaxFacts to identify and counter misleading vaccine information. Led by HealthGuard, the campaign features a browser extension that flags health hoaxes, provides credibility ratings for hundreds of websites, and guides users to sources that offer trusted information. The tool is a new service from NewsGuard, developed by two veteran journalists in 2018 to combat misinformation in the news. So far, HealthGuard has flagged nearly 400 websites for publishing misinformation and myths about COVID-19 vaccines.

In an interview on Dr. Whyte's video series, Coronavirus in Context, Steven Brill, the co-CEO of HealthGuard said, "When you take all those issues of unreliability and trustworthiness….and combine that with the subject of health care, all those dangers (of misinformation) multiply."