First volunteer of corona vaccine trial in UK is not dead
Claim: An online news website called News NT claimed that the first volunteer for a human trial of the corona virus vaccine in the United Kingdom has died. The rumour started spreading on social media platforms since then.
The article claimed that Elisa Granato, a scientist, who was the first volunteer for corona virus vaccine “died two days after the vaccine was administered”. The archived version of the article can be seen here.
But, she is alive and doing fine.
It also claimed that other four volunteers are said to be battling complications due to adverse reactions of the vaccine.
The same story was tweeted by people spreading the fake news.
https://twitter.com/newsbreakng204/status/1254307344072179712
First volunteer in UK coronavirus vaccine trial has died https://t.co/oxzdELbund
— Simon Jaysek (@SimonJaysek) April 26, 2020
The archived tweet can be seen here.
The false news went started spreading on Facebook as well.
One of the post’s captions says, “Elisa Granato, the first volunteer who availed herself in Oxford for a jab in the first Europe human trial of a vaccine to protect against the coronavirus pandemic has died. She died two days after the vaccine was administered, authorities have said and added that an investigation into the cause of the death has been initiated.”
The post has been archived here.
TRUTH
On April 23, Granato told British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), “I’m a scientist, so I wanted to try to support the scientific process wherever I can. Since I don’t study viruses, I felt a bit useless these days, so I felt like this is a very easy way for me to support the cause.” She was injected on her 32nd birthday. She also shared the following video confirming her well-being.
On 26th April 2020, the UK’s department of health and social care has also stated that this claim was false and tweeted, “News circulating on social media that the first volunteer in a UK #coronavirus vaccine trial has died is completely untrue.”
Twitter handle “@surrey13” also said the news is untrue. The user claimed that Elisa Granato, on her Twitter handle @Prokaryota, has responded to this news to be fake.
Elisa Granto on her personal private twitter handle tweeted that she is doing fine. She said, “Nothing like walking up to a fake article on your death … I’m doing fine everyone. Please don’t share the article in question, we don’t want to give them attention / clicks. Have a cute cat instead!”
Hence, Elisa Granato, the first volunteer of corona vaccine in UK is not dead. She is doing well since she was injected with the vaccine.
