Allegations that COVID-19 vaccines are “experimental”, have failed animal tests and have not completed initial research trials are untrue. They were included in a Facebook post addressed in this check.
With the title “6 facts about the 3 vaccines”, the report can be seen (here). Four of the most damaging claims are discussed below. However, any other falls outside the scope of this check.
CLAIM 1 – “All vaccines are considered experimental”
According to the report, all approved vaccines are considered experimental. This is not true – they were all done by standard safety tests before being introduced to the public.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom approved the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, while the former also approved shots by Johnson & Johnson; the latter by Oxford / AstraZeneca.
The shots of Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are virus vector vaccines, a type of jab that is also used during Ebola outbreaks, as well as in studies of diseases such as flu, Zika and HIV (here). They both use a modified and attenuated version of a harmless adenovirus to give instructions to cells to grow coronavirus proteins. This will elicit an immune response and prevent infection (here, here).
Meanwhile, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use messenger RNA (mRNA) to generate a similar immune response. Although these are the first mRNA vaccines to be introduced to the general public, the technology behind them has been developed over a number of years (here).
CLAIM 2 – “Everyone may skip animal trials”
The claim that COVID-19 vaccines skipped animal tests has already been covered by Reuters (here) (here).
The University of Oxford has confirmed that the vaccine it created with AstraZeneca has undergone animal testing in the UK, US and Australia (here). In September 2020, Pfizer and BioNTech released information on the effects of their mRNA vaccine in mice and non-human primates (here).
Moderna has released similar information (here, here) as well as Johnson & Johnson (here).
Due to time constraints and the urgency of finding a vaccine for COVID-19, Moderna and Pfizer did get approval to perform animal tests and early trials on humans at the same time, as opposed to completing animal trials before moving on to the human. trials. However, this does not mean that animal trials have been skipped (here).
CLAIM 3 – “Nobody completed initial research trials”
All four of the approved vaccines in the US and the UK have published results of the final phase three trials.
Pfizer / BioNTech’s phase three trial started at the end of July 2020 and the results were published in December 2020 (here). According to Pfizer’s website (here), 46,331 participants were registered on 153 sites around the world in Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and the USA.
According to Oxford / AstraZeneca clinical trials, 23,848 people across the UK, Brazil and South Africa were between April and November 2020, according to a report published by the Oxford Vaccine Group in the medical journal The Lancet (here, page 1) .
Johnson & Johnson recruited 44,325 people for its phase three clinical trial between September 2020 and January 2021 (here, here), while Moderna had 30,420 volunteers for the same phase of testing between July and October 2020 (Efficiency and safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS -CoV-2 Vaccine | NEJM).
CLAIM 4 – “No one will complete a research trial for 2-3 years”
This is not true and is probably the result of incorrect information shared elsewhere, which equates “estimated study completion dates” on clinical trial sites with the actual end dates of clinical trials.
For Pfizer, this estimated date is listed as January 31, 2023 (here), while Moderna is October 27, 2022 (here).
However, these dates do not mean that clinical trials will last that long, but refer to ongoing safety monitoring after the vaccine has been approved and rolled out, which is standard in the industry.
VERDICT
Untrue. COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the US and UK were not experimental and completed all animal and clinical trials.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.