A social media post by Australian celebrity chef Pete Evans has referred his 1.5 million Facebook followers to a report on the deaths of two participants in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial.
Evans’ Facebook post from December 9 links to an article on the website GreenMedInfo with the headline: “BREAKING: FDA announces 2 deaths of Pfizer vaccine trial participants from ‘serious adverse events’.”
At the time of writing, Evans’ post had been shared more than 130 times, attracting more than 140 comments and 350 reactions.
The UK government’s announcement on December 2 that it had authorised Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for use sparked cautious optimism that the end of the pandemic might be in sight – as well as a torrent of anti-vaccine misinformation.
The article from GreenMedInfo began: “Following only a day after our report that the FDA knows about and is preparing for COVID-19 vaccine adverse outcomes which include deaths, a newly released document on the FDA website shows that two participants died as a result of ‘serious adverse events’ from the experimental Covid vaccine.”
It referred to an article from The Jerusalem Post, which cited Reuters as reporting: “The FDA announced on Tuesday that two trial participants have died after receiving their coronavirus vaccine.”
The Jerusalem Post article did not state that the participants died due to receiving the vaccine.
Read the report from AAP FactCheck.