KNUST students discover vaccine for coronavirus and cure patient in Côte d’Ivoire.
The claim first surfaced in an article published by News7pm.com on January 27, 2020, titled "BREAKING: KNUST students successfully create vaccine for Coronavirus; Côte d\Ivoire patient cured - Ghana Latest News" (archived here). It opened:, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry of the Students of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have successfully created and tested a Coronavirus vaccine., The 8-mmeber medical student team from KNUST completed works on the vaccine last week but travelled to Ivory Coast when the first case of coronavirus was reported in the country this weekend. The students told the press that two of them were in China on an exchange program when the first case of the virus infection was reported. They collected samples of the virus from China to their laboratory on campus., Professor Dr. Israel Nluki, who supervised the students reports from Abidjan that the patient has shown significant signs of recovery after the vaccine was administered., "He should recover fully under 48 hours", Prof. Dr. Nluki said. (KNUST), Users on social media saw this:, The team is headed to China!, The made-up story claimed students at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana developed the vaccine and hailed its use in curing a coronavirus patient in Ivory Coast. As of January 29, 2020, at least 130 deaths are blamed on the outbreak, and The New York Times reported that Chinese officials had confirmed 6,000 cases of the virus., "The image featured in the article was stolen from another site that profiled the universitys pharmaceutical chemistry department in 2018.", Users who scroll down to the bottom of the News7pm.com story may notice that it is labeled as satire. The warning in the footer was copied from a famous hoax website., , The News7pm.com site shares an Adsense account with jetsanza.com and a Google Analytics account with breaking-cnn.com, a site pretending to be CNN. These two sites have been linked to or were part of a large network of Ghana-based fake news websites. Many of these sites have since been shut down., We wrote about News7pm.com before. Here are our most recent articles that mention the site:, See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:, Lead Stories is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers who are fighting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the alliance here., "Ryan Cooper, a staff writer and fact-checker for Lead Stories, is the former Director of Programming at CNN International, where he helped shape the networks daily newscasts broadcast to more than 280 million households around the world. He was based at the networks Los Angeles Bureau. There, he managed the team responsible for a three-hour nightly program,\xa0Newsroom LA.", "Formerly, he worked at the headquarters in Atlanta, and he spent four years at the London bureau. An award-winning producer, Cooper oversaw the networks Emmy Award-winning coverage of the uprising in Egypt in 2011. He also served as a supervising producer during much of the networks live reporting on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006, for which CNN received an Edward R. Murrow Award.", Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, deceptive or\n      inaccurate stories (or media) making the rounds on the internet.\n      \n      Spotted something? Let us know!., Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, deceptive or\n        inaccurate stories (or media) making the rounds on the internet.\n        \n        Spotted something? Let us know!.
Fake News: Students In Ghana Have NOT Successfully Created Vaccine For Coronavirus; Côte d'Ivoire Patient NOT Cured | Lead Stories