Defibrillators in telephone booths long preceded COVID

By ALI SWENSON
Associated Press

A movement to retrofit telephone kiosks with defibrillators across the U.K. is more than a decade old and didn’t result from the coronavirus or vaccines, according to Community Heartbeat Trust, the nonprofit that originated the idea. Still, widely shared social media posts falsely claim that the phone booth defibrillators are new or a reaction to COVID-19 vaccines causing cardiac arrests. One of the lifesaving devices featured in many recent posts was installed in the U.K. in 2017, years before the pandemic. Cardiologists say there’s no evidence to suggest COVID-19 vaccines are causing an increased rate of cardiac arrests.