A journalist in England was falsely offered the COVID-19 vaccine early after a clerical error saw his height in his medical records was only 6.2 inches.
Liam Thorp, the six-foot political editor of the Liverpool Echo, was falsely deemed to have a body mass index of 28,000 and therefore identified as vulnerable.
Thorp, 32 and with no underlying health issues, recalled the funny confusion in a viral Twitter thread and column published Wednesday. He also revealed how he had now rejected the shot.
Thorp said he was “really surprised” to be offered the coronavirus shot, given how it is currently being rolled out to people over 65 in the UK.
He made an appointment because he “assumed you always have to accept a vaccine,” but then he felt growing unease at his apparent surprise.
Thorp asked his surgery if a mistake had been made, he said, before picking up “one of the more bizarre phone calls of my life.”
According to health officials, his height was entered into the system as 6.2 centimeters instead of 1.8 meters, approximately 188 centimeters.
“The man’s nervous tone erupted into a laugh as I joked about gaining weight and losing a significant amount of height during the lockdown,” Thorp recalls. “If I had been less dumbfounded, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of this remarkable size was strolling south Liverpool.”
Read the full column here.
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