• The post also claims that six Chinese victims of the disease had been cured with this vaccine, but this news has not been published anywhere else
A blog post shared on Facebook claiming that medics at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus, and that six Chinese victims of the disease had been cured with this vaccine is FALSE.
According to the post, a 7-member medical student team from JKUAT had completed work on the vaccine ‘last week’ and shipped samples to China ‘over the weekend’, with those who received the treatment showing rapid signs of recovery.
There is no date of publication on the article, making it difficult to determine what the dates are.
However, this story has not appeared in any other news outlets, and it contains a number of inconsistencies.
Viral diseases, such as those caused by the coronavirus family, require an individual to be inoculated before infection for them to be effective, and not after infection.
Additionally, the article does not indicate key details, such as which university the students were at for the exchange program, and when and where exactly the vaccines were administered.
There is no Professor Moses Yumbya listed on staff at the JKUAT School of Health, or anywhere else on the university website.
The article also claims that the JKUAT team was expected to head to China to assist in mass production of the vaccine to help fight the virus, but Kenya Airways and a number of other airlines have suspended flights to the area.
There is no information about students on an exchange program to China on the JKUAT website, and the university also negated this claim when called for comment on this article.
Dr. Rollins Makokha, a Surgery resident at Kenyatta National Hospital, told PesaCheck that it is not possible to develop a vaccine and conduct human trials within a month. According to Dr Makokha, the first process would be to recreate the virus in a lab and then study it to determine the type of antibodies that the immune system would produce in response to it.
The vaccines would then be subjected to animal testing, and once the safety and efficacy is established, the vaccines can advance into clinical trials in humans. If they pass the process and are deemed safe for humans they can then be mass produced for vaccination.
ABC News Australia reported on 29 January that Australian scientists had succeeded in growing the 2019-nCoV virus in a lab, which is the first step in the vaccine development process. The scientists are aiming to meet a 16-week deadline to test the coronavirus vaccine on humans.
In the meantime, the World Health Organisation called for continued collaboration on studies into the severity and transmissibility of the virus in order to advance scientific understanding of the virus and contribute to the development of medical countermeasures such as vaccines and treatments.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that medics at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus, and that six Chinese victims of the disease had been cured with this vaccine and finds it to be FALSE.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi, with research input from Sylvia Makinia.