According to the headlines of an article shared as a screenshot, the first volunteer in the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 vaccine trial has died, two days after getting the injection.
“First volunteer in UK coronavirus vaccine trial has died,” claims a headline in a screenshot doing the rounds on Facebook in South Africa., “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,” the text reads. It claims she died two days after the vaccine was administered., On 23 April 2020, University of Oxford researchers began testing a Covid-19 vaccine on volunteers. About 1,110 people will take part. Half will be given the vaccine, and the other half, the control group, will get a commonly used vaccine against meningitis., A video by the university shows Dr Elisa Granato, a post-doctoral researcher in the Oxford’s zoology department, getting one of the first two jabs administered at the start of the trial., But claims that Granato had died soon spread on social media – and were debunked by fact-checkers and news sites across the world., She has not died., On Twitter – her tweets are protected – Granato now gives her name as “Dr Elisa Granato – 100% alive”., On 26 April, BBC journalist Fergus Walsh tweeted a video of Granato – a day after she had supposedly died., ….and here is Dr Elisa Granato in person. Alive and well pic.twitter.com/Csw1WqmBQa, — Fergus Walsh (@BBCFergusWalsh) April 26, 2020, , “I’m very much alive, thank you,” she says. “I’m having a cup of tea, it’s Sunday, 26 April, three days after my birthday. Three days after I got the vaccine or the control – we don’t know. And I’m having a nice Sunday.” – Mary Alexander, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
‘I’m very much alive.’ No, first volunteer in UK Covid-19 trial hasn’t died | Africa Check