Fact Check: Do the COVID Vaccines Contain HIV?
Several Facebook posts claim that the COVID-19 vaccine contains HIV. One post claims that “the vaccine has HIV as an ingredient.” Another Facebook post reads: “When 70% of Americans finally realize they’ve been injected with HIV & other poisons, there will be violence in the streets.”
These are false claims. The COVID-19 vaccine does not contain HIV.
A spokesperson from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Dispatch Fact Check via email that: “the COVID-19 vaccines approved and authorized in the United States don’t inject people with HIV.”
The spokesperson added that:“The exact vaccine ingredients vary by manufacturer. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines also contain messenger RNA (mRNA) and the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine contains a harmless version of a virus unrelated to the virus that causes COVID-19 (not human immunodeficiency viruses).”
Similarly Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, described the claim as “completely false.”
He also explained to The Dispatch Fact Check that: “None of the COVID-19 vaccines, whether they be mRNA, adenovirus vectors, protein, or inactivated virus vaccines, contain any material remotely related to HIV-1.”
“These vaccines have been injected into 4.9 billion people throughout the world,”he added, “and not a single one of them has contracted HIV-1 infection from the vaccine.”
Furthermore, HIV is not listed as an ingredient in either the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, or the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine.
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