FALSE: This video claiming that Roche has developed a vaccine against COVID-19 is a hoax
The video contains footage of an authentic briefing by President Donald Trump, overlaid with text making the false claim
A Facebook post shared by Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko claiming that the United States has successfully developed a vaccine against COVID-19 is FALSE.
Governor Sonko shared the post on his official Facebook page.
The post contains a video from Tik Tok of US President Donald Trump at a press briefing with representatives from Roche, a pharmaceutical company working on a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
In the video, a representative from Roche thanks the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approving the company’s COVID-19 test.
While the video is authentic, it contains a text overlay claiming that Trump had announced the launch of a vaccine against COVID-19, which he did not.
The White House briefing on March 19 came after Roche launched a clinical trial of Actemra, a drug used to treat cytokine release syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis, which has shown potential as a COVID-19 drug. The company issued a statement announcing that it is working with the US Food and Drug Administration to initiate a trial to evaluate the safety of the drug.
Clinical trials will begin in April 2020 and will involve 330 patients globally.
According to the WHO, there is no specific medication that can treat COVID-19 at the moment. There are currently two vaccines at clinical trial stage, while 42 others are still at the preclinical stage of evaluation.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that the United States has successfully developed a vaccine against COVID-19 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 Fact-Checker James Okong’o and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Ann Ngengere.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
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).
