Claims about US medical codes for unvaccinated are misleading
Social media posts claim the US government is using codes from doctors to track people who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19. This is misleading; under federal law, individuals must consent to the release of their medical records — and the codes are part of an international system that makes anonymized health data available for research.
“ICD-10 is our new label so we can be tracked?” asks a February 5, 2023 Instagram post sharing a TikTok video.
The narrator in the clip says: “Any time you go to the doctor — you have a physical, you have your blood drawn — they ask you, ‘Are you vaccinated?’ And if you say no, you become an ICD-10 so you can be tracked.”
The claim has also circulated on Instagram, where a February 6 post shares a video of Fox News host Laura Ingraham in a segment with a chyron that says: