Nicki Minaj was absent at the recently concluded Met gala over compulsory COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Nicki Minaj opted to remain unvaccinated amid the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result, she couldn’t attend the 2021 Met Gala on Monday night in New York.
The New York rapper took to Twitter to explain the reason behind her decision.
“They want you to get vaccinated for the Met. if I get vaccinated it won’t [be] for the Met. It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research. I’m working on that now,” the rapper, who also decided to not perform at the VMAs on Sunday, wrote in a series of tweets Monday.
In a previous tweet she shared earlier on Monday, Minaj seemingly revealed she had already contracted the virus while preparing for Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards, so she ended up pulling out of her planned performance. “I was prepping for vmas then i shot a video & guess who got COVID?” she said. “Do u know what it is not to be able to kiss or hold your tiny baby for over a week? A baby who is only used to his mama? ‘Get vaccinated’” she said in her tweet.
The singer welcomed a son in September 2020 with husband Kenneth Petty.
Minaj had tweeted Monday that she has “an infant with no nannies during COVID… Not risking his health to be seen,” when a fan stated that she had made no public appearance in almost a month.
Though she shared that she is personally holding off on the vaccine, Minaj encouraged others to get vaccinated and noted she’ll be vaccinated eventually.
Roughly half of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but vaccine hesitancy persists as the Delta variant rages in the United States.
The pandemic has cost at least 656,000 American lives. Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated people, according to new studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Friday.