Israeli scientists have developed a COVID-19 vaccine.
It features a photo of a vial labelled “Coronavirus Vaccine” and Sinhala-language text, which translates to English as: “Israel discovers a vaccine against coronavirus. / Doctors of Israel - the home of medical research, has said they have received excellent results by giving the corona vaccine.”, Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:, The post was also shared here, here, here and here on Facebook alongside a similar claim., The\xa0claim is\xa0misleading; Israel’s state-funded MIGAL Research Institute announced that it has developed a vaccine against Infectious Bronchitis Virus, a strain of coronavirus affecting poultry. The institute added that this may be adapted to create a human vaccine against COVID-19, but is still “weeks away” from “completing safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing”, ahead of a vaccine being produced., In a press release dated February 27, 2020, it said: “MIGAL’s researchers have developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), to be adapted soon and create a human vaccine against COVID-19.”, “Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything we can to accelerate development. Our goal is to produce the vaccine during the next 8-10 weeks, and to achieve safety approval in 90 days.”, The World Health Organization’s website also says “there is no vaccine and no specific antiviral medicine to prevent or treat COVID-2019” in this Q&A section of its website., Below is a screenshot of the relevant section on the WHO website:, A Google reverse image search for the\xa0photo in the misleading posts\xa0found it was previously published on the stock photography website Shutterstock here., The caption reads: "Coronavirus vaccine vial with injection syringe at the background.", "Coronavirus" is a general term for a group of viruses., Below is a screenshot comparison between the photo misleading post (L) and the Shutterstock photo (R):, , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Israeli scientists have not developed a COVID-19 vaccine -- they were still working to develop one in February 2020 | AFP Fact Check