Reuters news agency has posted a warning that some of Chief Minister Alfred Cannan’s speech remarks are being misinterpreted by Covid conspiracy theorists.

Fact checkers from the international news agency said that parts of his speech from a November 28 Covid-19 press briefing were being shared on social media and used to falsely claim that he showed Covid vaccines cause ’antibody-dependent enhancement’ (ADE).

This is a biological process under which antibodies, rather than offering protection against viruses, can enhance their entry (into cells) and replication.

But Mr Cannan was in fact referring to concerns about immune escape, which is where current vaccines do not work as effectively on new variants.

The clip being shared online shows Mr Cannan saying: ’There is still much we do not know about the omicron variant. The most crucial is that question about how effective the vaccine will be in offering us protection.

’The greatest concern is that the virus has mutated to such an extent that our immune systems trained by the vaccine no longer recognise the virus and no longer trigger an immune response.

’This sort of variant is known as vaccine escape.’

’Escape variants’ of a virus are ones that elude the immune response provided by vaccines, which may have been designed for different variants of the virus.

One social media comment shared with the video said: ’This was warned about early on by many virologists, scientists, doctors, and experts who were censored, slandered, and cancelled for speaking about it.

’[This is an example of] antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Besides a small demographic of those that needed or wanted the vaccine natural acquired immunity was and is the answer.’

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Reuters fact checkers said: ’Mr Cannan does not speak about antibody dependent enhancement or anything similar in the clip or the entire speech.

’He is merely postulating that the Covid-19 vaccine might not be effective against the omicron variant of the virus.’

It pointed out that in a later part of the speech, Cannan stresses: ’I must say to you and once again emphasise that vaccines and the booster programme are providing our best defence against the virus.’

Arguments about ADE are used by those opposing vaccines as an argument for not taking them.

A study performed with the original Wuhan/D614G strain did show that infection-enhancing antibodies directed against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein did facilitate virus infection in vitro, but not in vivo.

And a later study did note that ’ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors)’.

However, Reuters said that ’while ADE was a concern initially contemplated by scientists creating COVID-19 vaccines, there have been no signs of cases happening during clinical trials or the vaccine roll-out.

Government head of external relations, Peter Boxer, told Reuters that Mr Cannan was in no way suggesting the variant would evade the Covid-19 vaccines.

Mr Boxer said: ’He was expressing the fact that there is "still so much we do not know" about the variant and was expressing one concern in this period of uncertainty as to whether (or not) the vaccines would continue to offer protection.

’The Chief Minister is a strong advocate of the current vaccines and is proud of the high levels of uptake among our population.’