A video shared 2,300 times on Facebook contains false information about COVID-19 vaccines, such as a suggestion that hundreds of volunteers died after a clinical trial.
The clip was posted on Facebook on December 4 (here) and shows narration of a man allegedly named Charlie Ward. This article discusses the main utterances of the speaker, which have been shared and repeated by other Facebook users (here).
In the video, Ward claims to have received information claiming that ‘every one of the 100 people who tested the Gates vaccine is now dead. They all died within 7 days of having it. He also claims that the ‘new vaccine’ is designed to reduce population. These allegations are false.
First, there is no experimental COVID-19 vaccine referred to as “the gateway vaccine”. A list of the COVID-19 candidate vaccines and their developers can be seen here. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has used millions of funds to develop COVID-19 vaccines and help their distribution (here), but it does not create its own.
Second, there is no evidence to support the claim that 100 people died during a trial of any COVID-19 vaccine. This claim can be seen on a handful of social media posts dating from November 14, 2020 (here) but no credible source for such information has emerged.
Reuters reported in October that a volunteer had died in AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine trial, but added that the trial would continue (here). At the time, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters the trial would be suspended if the deceased volunteer received the COVID-19 vaccine, indicating that the person was part of the control group carrying a meningitis -jab got.
On December 8, AstraZeneca published its peer-reviewed trial data in the British medical journal The Lancet for public inquiry (here, Reuters reports here).
On November 10, a trial for China’s Sinovac vaccine was also stopped after a volunteer died. The state government of Sao Paulo, where the trial took place, said the death was registered as a suicide and is being investigated (here).
While Pfizer’s vaccine has spread across the UK in a global first place (here), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on December 8, there were a total of six deaths in Pfizer’s trial of 44,000 people. Two deaths were among those who received the vaccine; the rest got a placebo.
“All deaths represent events that occur at a similar rate in the general population,” FDA staff said (here).
Vaccinations are thoroughly tested for safety and are given to thousands of volunteers before being rolled out en masse (here).
The speaker’s claim that the COVID-19 vaccine is being used for population reduction is not supported by evidence. Reuters has previously denied this claim (here, here).
VERDICT
Untrue. There is no evidence that 100 volunteers died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. Bill Gates finances the development of vaccines, but does not produce one himself. A small number of deaths have been reported during clinical trials, but this has not raised any concerns about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. All vaccines are carefully tested to ensure their safety, and the coronavirus vaccines do not differ.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.