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Dr Elisa Granato, one of the first participants in a UK Covid-19 vaccine trial, has died. This is false. She is not dead. False news reports have been circulating online claiming that Dr Elisa Granato, one of the first participants in the UK's human trials of a possible vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, has died shortly after being injected with the vaccine. Dr Granato is not dead, and the reports are fake. The BBC's medical correspondent Fergus Walsh, who covered the beginning of the vaccine trial, wrote on Twitter that he had spoken to Dr Granato over Skype that morning. Fake news has been circulating on social media that the first volunteer in the Oxford vaccine trial has died. This is not true! I spent several minutes this morning chatting with Elisa Granato via Skype. She is very much alive and told me she is feeling absolutely fine pic.twitter.com/iWAtYaSkRZ He added that Dr Granato had reassured her family that she was alive in case they saw the reports of her death. This was also reported on the BBC News website. He later (after this article was first published) posted a video of Dr Granato saying that she was very much alive and having a cup of tea. ....and here is Dr Elisa Granato in person. Alive and well pic.twitter.com/Csw1WqmBQa Dr Granato herself tweeted on Sunday morning: Nothing like [waking] up to a fake article on your death ... I'm doing fine everyone. Please don't share the article in question. (She has since protected her Twitter account, meaning that at the time of writing the tweet is currently not publicly visible, but it can still be seen in Google's cache of the page.) The UK's Department of Health and Social Care has also said that the story is completely untrue. News circulating on social media that the first volunteer in a UK #coronavirus vaccine trial has died is completely untrue.Before sharing unsubstantiated claims online, use the SHARE checklist to help stop the spread of harmful content: ▶️ https://t.co/9rAFQES8Xm pic.twitter.com/HgG4cHnLFQ In a statement published to their website, the Oxford Vaccine Trial said: We are aware there have been and will be rumours and false reports about the progress of the trial. We urge people not to give these any credibility and not to circulate them. We will not be offering a running commentary about the trial but all official updates will appear on this site. Dr Granato, who is herself a post-doctoral microbiology researcher in the Zoology department at Oxford University, was one of the first two volunteers to be injected as part of the trial into the vaccine candidate known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. Because the trial tests ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 against a control, it is not certain that Dr Granato was even given the coronavirus vaccine: it is equally likely that she got the control injection (which in this case is a meningitis vaccine that is already licensed and widely used in the UK). The websites that have spread the false reports of Dr Granato's death are not recognised news outlets and do not provide any reputable sources or evidence for their claims. The article that appears to be the original report contains multiple grammatical and spelling errors, and refers to a supposed statement by the researchers that does not exist. We've written more about how you can fact check claims you might see about the coronavirus pandemic for yourself. Hear us talk through this fact check on our weekly podcast. Listen Update 26 April 2020 Updated to include the video of Dr Granato confirming that she is alive. This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Dr Granato is not dead.
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