Nicki Minaj tweeted on Monday, “I was prepping for vmas then i shot a video & guess who got COVID?” She continued, “They want you to get vaccinated for the Met. if I get vaccinated it won’t for the Met. It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research. I’m working on that now. In the meantime my loves, be safe. Wear the mask with 2 strings that grips your head & face. Not that loose one 🙏♥️.”

In a subsequent tweet, Minaj wrote: “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied.”

Top health officials in Trinidad & Tobago and the United States have now responded to Minaj’s claim about her cousin’s friend. On CNN on Tuesday, Jake Tapper asked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, “Is there any evidence that the Pfizer, the Moderna, or the J&J vaccines cause any reproductive issues in men or women?”

“The answer to that, Jake, is a resounding no,” Dr. Fauci told Tapper. “There’s no evidence that it happens, nor is there any mechanistic reason to imagine that it would happen. So the answer to your question is no.”

At a press conference today, the Honourable Terrence Deyalsingh, Trinidad & Tobago’s Minister of Health, said that officials spent Tuesday looking into Minaj’s claim and “wasted so much time yesterday running down this false claim.” Hon. Deyalsingh continued:

It is, as far as we know, at this point in time—there has been no such reported either side effect or adverse event. And what was sad about this is that it wasted our time yesterday, trying to track down, because we take all these claims seriously, whether it’s on social media or mainstream media. As we stand now, there is absolutely no reported such side effect or adverse event of testicular swelling in Trinidad or, I dare say, Dr. Hinds, anywhere else. None that we know of anywhere else in the world.