Is UK using black people at guinea pigs in COVID-19 vaccines? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A message spreading on social media claims that the UK is currently testing a COVID-19 vaccination on black people, effectively using them as “guinea pigs”.

FALSE

An example of the message can be seen below.

I received a phone call from my surgery to come for pneumonia vaccine which I declined. In the hospital, they now refer to it as COVID Pneumonia. So let’s be aware.
There is a coronavirus vaccination on trial in the U.K. and they are first targeting all the black people for this vaccination. The GPs have been instructed to vaccinate all black people living in the UK. Please say NO as we are being used as Guinea pigs to try the success of the vaccination. This vaccination is made from the actual Covid 19 virus. So, please say NO to being used as Guinea pigs. Say NO to this vaccination. Tell your children as they will be visiting schools to vaccinate black children as well.
Forward this message to your contacts.

The message is false, and does not provide any evidence, reputable sources or any reason to believe it. All of the assertions made in the message are baseless, including the claim that hospitals refer to COVID-19 as “COVID Pneumonia” (though COVID-19 can, in some cases, lead to pneumonia) the claim that hospitals or surgeries are phoning UK residents offering to vaccinate them, and the fundamental claim that they are targeted black people as guinea pigs.

The message above, without evidence or reason, expects the reader to believe that hospitals are targeting black people for vaccination trials, even going as far to visit exclusively black children in schools, in the middle of perhaps the most significant Black Lives Matter protests to date, all escaping any mainstream media or social media attention. The message is a stretch, to say the least.


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Back in a fact based reality, COVID-19 vaccination trials in the UK began in April 2020 and have been – at the time of publication – continuing ever since. Currently, test vaccines developed by the University of Oxford are currently being tested in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.

Those people who are used as test subjects have all volunteered to do so, and represent a number of different skin colours.

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