Original title: The government of Zaev and Filipche, without any public debate and consultation, yesterday signed a decision to accept the untested vaccine against COVID-19On July 14, 2020, a day of pre-election silence, the portal Infomax published a clickbait article spinning an information from the government session, in order to create manipulation that the Government of Zaev and Filipche, without public debate and consultation, signed a decision to accept the untested vaccine against COVID-19.
The link to the original article can be found here.
In the published article, with a clickbait title the author presents the content in which he spins official information from a government session and makes an incorrect manipulative claim that: “The Government of Zaev and Filipche, without public debate and consultation, signed a decision to accept the untested vaccine against COVID-19“.
The mentioned vaccine is in the process of making. The real facts are:
“Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands signed an initial deal for over 300 million doses of a promising coronavirus vaccine currently still in the experimental phase”, Deutsche Welle reported. All EU countries will be able to participate in this program. The vaccine is expected to be finished by the end of 2020.
According to the World Health Organization, the AstraZeneca vaccine, which Oxford University is working on, is one of several vaccines currently undergoing clinical evaluation. The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca was the first to sign the Gavi Covax AMC mechanism to provide global and equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, part of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance.
The Covax mechanism is an agreement between the World Health Organization and the Global Vaccine Alliance and Immunization with all potential vaccine inventors, when they are ready, to distribute the vaccine evenly across the signatory countries until they reach 20 percent of the population.
AstraZeneca has signed a licensed deal to procure 1 billion doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries, provided it provides 400 million doses by the end of 2020.
At the 76th session the Government of North Macedonia adopted the accession to “Covax”, the global procurement of vaccines for COVID-19. In addition to the official information it is stated:
At this session, the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia reviewed and adopted the information on the possibility for the Republic of North Macedonia to join the global procurement of COVID-19 vaccines, through the Covax mechanism for providing global and equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and authorized the Minister of Health Assoc. Dr. Venko Filipche to sign the non-binding statement of intentions to join the Covax mechanism and to participate in the consultative discussions on the design and working principles of the mechanism, which will be held later this month.
From this it can be clearly seen that this is not a decision to accept an untested vaccine against COVID-19, but to review and adopt an information on the possibility for the Republic of North Macedonia to join the global procurement of COVID-19 vaccines, as and authorization of the Minister of Health Venko Filipche to sign the non-binding statement of intentions to join the Covax mechanism and to participate in discussions for consultations on the design and working principles of the mechanism.
The published article is an attempt to spin official information in order to create manipulative claims. The published misinformation can contribute to misinformation of the public. Spreading misinformation during an epidemic or disease pandemic can cause serious consequences.
The F2N2 team assesses this article as misinformation, politically biased, tendentious and unprofessional.
