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YouTube has removed content from a Singaporean woman, Iris Koh, for violating YouTube's community guidelines, a press release by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Nov. 7 noted.

Koh is the founder of a group, "Healing the Divide", which adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination.

Videos has misleading information about Covid-19

MOH said the YouTube channel has a history of posting and sharing content that "perpetuates falsehood and misleading information about Covid-19 and vaccines".

The press release said: "The government takes a serious view of the deliberate communication of these falsehoods and will not hesitate to take action against those who put the public's health and well-being at risk by spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines."

As of the time of writing, Koh's YouTube channel has 64 videos and at least four are Covid-19 or vaccine-related.

These video titles include:

• "Do not take the C-19 vaccine until you watch this."
• "Healing the Divide: Remembering Those We Love and Lost"
• "Why we don't want to take the vaccine: Stories from the community."
• "Man's wife lost her hearing and now in depression after taking the V."

While it is unclear what content was removed and which community guidelines were not followed, YouTube has a Covid-19 medical misinformation policy that does not allow creators to post content about Covid-19 that "poses a serious risk of egregious harm".

Here's YouTube's statement in full:

"We are committed to keeping YouTube safe from harmful Covid misinformation and since the beginning of the pandemic, we've had clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies. We first announced in October 2020 that we would expand our Covid-19 Medical Misinformation policy to remove claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our Covid-19 vaccine policies. Additionally, we have vaccine alerts that point users to authoritative information about the Covid-19 vaccine."

According to YouTube's community guidelines, the platform doesn't allow videos that contain claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organisation.

MOH welcomes move by YouTube

In the release by MOH, the ministry said it "notes and welcomes" the move and observed that Facebook has previously suspended Koh's account in more than one instance for violating their community guidelines.

In September, Koh published a Facebook post claiming that she personally knows of three deaths that occurred after the individuals took their vaccines.

MOH has advised members of the public not to speculate and/ or spread misinformation that may cause public alarm, and refer to credible sources of information instead.

One can get the latest information on Covid-19 and vaccinations here.

Top image screenshot from YouTube.

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