A team of medical trainees from JKUAT (a university in Kenya) have developed and tested a vaccine successfully.
According to the post, a 7-member medical student team from JKUAT had completed work on the vaccine ‘last week’ and shipped samples to China ‘over the weekend’, with those who received the treatment showing rapid signs of recovery., There is no date of publication on the article, making it difficult to determine what the dates are., However, this story has not appeared in any other news outlets, and it contains a number of inconsistencies., Viral diseases, such as those caused by the coronavirus family, require an individual to be inoculated before infection for them to be effective, and not after infection., Additionally, the article does not indicate key details, such as which university the students were at for the exchange program, and when and where exactly the vaccines were administered., There is no Professor Moses Yumbya listed on staff at the JKUAT School of Health, or anywhere else on the university website., The article also claims that the JKUAT team was expected to head to China to assist in mass production of the vaccine to help fight the virus, but Kenya Airways and a number of other airlines have suspended flights to the area., There is no information about students on an exchange program to China on the JKUAT website, and the university also negated this claim when called for comment on this article., Dr. Rollins Makokha, a Surgery resident at Kenyatta National Hospital, told PesaCheck that it is not possible to develop a vaccine and conduct human trials within a month. According to Dr Makokha, the first process would be to recreate the virus in a lab and then study it to determine the type of antibodies that the immune system would produce in response to it., The vaccines would then be subjected to animal testing, and once the safety and efficacy is established, the vaccines can advance into clinical trials in humans. If they pass the process and are deemed safe for humans they can then be mass produced for vaccination., ABC News Australia reported on 29 January that Australian scientists had succeeded in growing the 2019-nCoV virus in a lab, which is the first step in the vaccine development process. The scientists are aiming to meet a 16-week deadline to test the coronavirus vaccine on humans., In the meantime, the World Health Organisation called for continued collaboration on studies into the severity and transmissibility of the virus in order to advance scientific understanding of the virus and contribute to the development of medical countermeasures such as vaccines and treatments., PesaCheck has looked into the claim that medics at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus, and that six Chinese victims of the disease had been cured with this vaccine and finds it to be FALSE., This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms., By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds., Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content., This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi, with research input from Sylvia Makinia., PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org., PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with additional funding support from the International Budget Partnership (Kenya) and Twaweza, in partnership with a coalition of local media organisations, and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)., Written by, Written by
FALSE: A team of medical doctor trainees from JKUAT has not produced a vaccine for coronavirus