Fact Check: 2018 news clipping on measles vaccine side effects linked to COVID-19 vaccine
A newspaper clipping with the headline "40 students hospitalised after vaccination in Knp" has gone viral on social media with the false claim
By Newsmeter Network Published on 27 Jan 2021 7:41 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A newspaper clipping with the headline "40 students hospitalised after vaccination in Knp" has gone viral on social media with the false claim that this incident is related to the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive launched on 16 January.
A Twitter user shared the photo of the newspaper clipping and wrote, "Soon after injected covid-19 vaccine in India (sic)." (archive)
Fact Check:
NewsMeter found that the newspaper clipping is not related to the COVID-19 vaccination and the report is from 2018.
We used the same headline to perform a search and found a report by the Hindustan Times on the website pressreader.com from November 2018. This indicates that the side effects mentioned in the report are not linked to the COVID-19 vaccine.
According to the article, "More than 40 children from three schools in Kanpur developed rashes, fever, headache and abdominal pain after they were administered measles, rubella vaccine on Thursday as part of a state wide vaccination programme."
The vaccine was for measles and rubella and not COVID-19.
The Press Information Bureau (PIB) has also debunked the claim. It said the news is fake and is not related to the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive in India
Evidently, the clipping has been falsely linked to the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The report is from 2018 and is related to the measles vaccine. Hence, the claim is FALSE
