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| - Fact Check: Conspiracy theory falsely accuses pharma company behind Covid outbreak and vaccine
A viral post on social media claims that British pharmaceutical company GSK owns the Wuhan lab in which Covid-19 was created as well as Pfizer, which produced the Covid-19 vaccine.
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India Today Fact Check
GSK, a British pharmaceutical company, does not own either Pfizer or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese government controls Wuhan Institute of Virology. GSK and Pfizer embarked on a joint venture in 2018, but it doesn’t involve merging or swapping ownership.
A Facebook post sniffs a conspiracy as it claims to find a common thread between the financiers of the Chinese laboratory where coronavirus first emerged and the vaccine manufacturer.
A long text shared by several Facebook users broadly claims that the Chinese biological laboratory in Wuhan where coronavirus emerged is owned by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The same GSK also owns Pfizer, the pharma company that produces vaccine for the virus. The viral post further hints at the involvement of billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates in the conspiracy.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that GSK, a British pharmaceutical company, does not own either Pfizer or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese government controls the Wuhan Institute of Virology. GSK and Pfizer embarked on a joint venture in 2018, but it doesn’t involve merging or swapping ownership.
The archived versions of the posts are saved here and here.
Who owns what?
The entire claim falls flat on the very first sentence which claims that the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan where the coronavirus first emerged is owned by GSK.
As per its website, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), controlled by the State Council of the Chinese government.
In an open letter to science magazine “Nature” in 2019, Qingquan Zhang, a CAS representative, wrote that CAS is not run independently of the government. “CAS has never sought or achieved financial autonomy. Over the past 40 years, half of its income has come directly from central government investment; the rest has been from competitive funding or technology transfer,” the letter said.
The viral post also claims that GSK owns Pfizer, the US pharma company, which along with German firm BioNTech, has developed and manufactured a coronavirus vaccine.
As per news reports, GSK and Pfizer had struck a joint venture in 2018 to combine their consumer healthcare units on prescription medicines. But this deal was never meant for swapping ownership.
On the other hand, the list of shareholders shows that Pfizer has multiple owners, with The Vanguard Group being the top investor.
Hence, the viral post claiming that the same pharmaceutical company is financing both the vaccine manufacturer and the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan where coronavirus originated is false.
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