mobile.reuters.com Open in urlscan Pro
13.32.29.94 Public Scan

Back to summary

URL:
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL1N2MZ2FR
Submission: On October 15 via api (October 15th 2021, 4:45:31 pm UTC) from QA — Scanned from DE

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

* SECTIONS
* Home
* World
* Markets
* Business
* Politics
* Technology
* U.S.

Close the sidebar
#Top News
Wed May 12, 2021 / 1:38 PM EDT

FACT CHECK-A TWO-YEAR-OLD DID NOT DIE DURING PFIZER’S PEDIATRIC COVID-19 VACCINE
TRIAL

Reuters Fact Check
*
*

A two-year-old did not die during Pfizer-BioNTech’s ongoing COVID-19 vaccine
trial in kids under 12, contrary to claims on social media. An unverified entry
saying so in the United States’ federal vaccine safety surveillance database has
since been removed for being fabricated.

“Two-year-old Baby Dies During Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Experiments on
Children,” reads a screenshot shared on Facebook, accompanied by an image of a
crying child receiving a shot (here). Other posts sharing this screenshot can be
found here , here and here .

The headline comes from an April 30 article on the website Natural News
(here://www.naturalnews.com/2021-04-30-baby-dies-pfizer-covid19-children-vaccine-trials.html),
described by the Vox news outlet as “one of the internet’s worst conspiracy
sites” (here).

The Natural News article cites the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
(VAERS), the federal vaccine safety surveillance program run by the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), as the source of a report: “the two-year-old girl received
her second dose of Pfizer’s DNA-modifying mRNA injection on February 25. On
March 1, she suffered some kind of serious adverse reaction. On March 3, she
died. No further details were provided.”

As the Reuters Fact Check team debunked here , vaccines using new mRNA
technology, such as the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by both Pfizer-BioNTech
and Moderna, do not alter recipients’ DNA.

Natural News links to another website called Great Game India
(here://greatgameindia.com/pfizer-clinical-trials-children/), which shows an
image of a VAERS entry stating that a two-year-old female child in Virginia
received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on February 25, developed an
adverse reaction on March 1, and died two days later.

As Reuters has previously clarified here and here , anyone can report events to
VAERS, whose database contains unverified information.

“The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate,
coincidental, or unverifiable,” a disclaimer on the CDC website says (here).

When downloading the data, users are presented with the further caveat that the
data does not include information from investigations into reported cases. The
disclaimer also says “the inclusion of events in VAERS data does not imply
causality” (here).

In this case, the entry for the two-year-old was fabricated, a CDC spokesperson
told Reuters via phone, who said the report was consequently removed from the
VAERS database.

As reported here by Vice, this is not the first time members of the general
public have entered fabricated VAERS reports.

Indeed the entry’s listed VAERS ID, 1074247, can no longer be found in VAERS
data available for download here .

With no COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use for children that young,
the posts and articles claim that the child was part of Pfizer and BioNTech’s
ongoing pediatric COVID-19 vaccine trial for children under the age of 12.

But participants in this clinical trial, which include children as young as six
months, did not start until a month after the two-year-old child in Virginia
allegedly received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, making it impossible for this
child to have received a dose.

The first volunteers in the early-stage pediatric trial were given their first
injections on March 24, a Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo told Reuters the
following day (here).

A Pfizer spokesperson told Reuters via email that there have been no verified
reports of any death in the company’s pediatric trial.

Of the more than 259 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the United
States from Dec. 14, 2020 through May 10, 2021, “VAERS received 4,434 reports of
death (0.0017%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.” Having reviewed
“available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and
medical records,” the CDC found “no evidence that vaccination contributed to
patient deaths” (here).

VERDICT

False. A report of a two-year-old dying after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19
vaccine was fabricated.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our
work to fact-check social media posts here .

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

mobile.reuters.com Open in urlscan Pro 13.32.29.94 Public Scan

Form analysis 0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

mobile.reuters.com Open in urlscan Pro
13.32.29.94 Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM