M.I.A. would rather die than be vaccinated against coronavirus

She tweeted: "If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I'm gonna choose death.

"In America they made me vaccinate my child before the school admission," she added. "It was the hardest thing. To not have choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 (sic)"

Asked by a follower if she is an anti-vaxxer, she confirmed: "Yeah."

The 'Paper Planes' singer then suggested the current pandemic was man-made for profit.

In a now-deleted tweet, she wrote: "Most of science is in bed with business. Business is in bed with banks, banks are in bed with tech, tech's in bed with us, [we're] in bed with corona. Corona is in bed with science. So on ...(sic)"

And M.I.A. - whose real name is Mathangi 'Maya' Arulpragasam - insisted people are not "gonna die" from coronavirus and don't need to "stress the medical systems" if they fall ill.

She posted: "Have a healthy life! Don't live in fear!

"Don't panic you are ok. You are not gonna die. You can make it without stressing the medical systems. Just breathe. You are going to be ok. You can make it through without jumping in the frying pan. You are fine ..."

Following a backlash against her comments, M.I.A. insisted she didn't care.

She tweeted: "Cancelling is irrelevant!"

There is currently no vaccine available against coronavirus, but there are reportedly 35 companies working to create one.

To date, almost 20,000 people have died from the virus, which is also known as Covid-19.