Several high-profile right-wing news outlets and social media accounts are circulating a blog post with the misleading claim that the CDC has begun tracking people who refused COVID-19 vaccination. The claim is based on WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, which include a designation for people who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The high engagement on the posts and the shares by high-profile figures increase the risk of this misinformation. Debunking messaging may explain that ICD-10 codes, which date back to 2015, are used to classify thousands of medical diagnoses and symptoms consistently in hospitals worldwide. The codes are important for monitoring national and international health trends and have been assigned to many vaccines. In 2021, WHO introduced several new ICD codes related to COVID-19 diagnosis, complications, and vaccination status. These codes are used in part to document any health issues that arise after COVID-19 infection or vaccination.
