The CEO of BioNTech, the biotechnology company that worked with Pfizer to develop one of the COVID-19 vaccines, has been fully inoculated against the virus. He received two doses of his firm’s product and has since been given a booster jab.
Facebook posts ( here and here ) that claim Ugur Sahin admitted he did not taken a vaccine are based on an outdated video interview with the English-language German public broadcaster DW News (original interview here ).
Both contain an edited version of the DW News YouTube video, which has also been shared on BitChute here and Twitter here .
The first Facebook post includes the caption: “Earlier this year vaccine inventor and investor Dr Ugur Sahin CEO of BioNTech and inventor of the BIO N TECH Pfizer vaccine avoids answering with any detail the question of why he wasn’t vaccinated at that time, saying vaguely it’s against the law for him to do so. Judge yourself his reaction to the question.”
The second reads: “Dr Ugur Sahin CEO of BioNTech and inventor of the BIO N TECH Pfizer jab refuses to take the jab for safety reasons.”
Meanwhile, the BitChute and Twitter versions make similar claims, such as the professor “admitting” he has not taken the vaccine.
However, the footage used is from Dec. 22, 2020. It took place prior to vaccine rollouts in Germany (here), and was therefore prior to Sahin being legally eligible for the jab, which he explained in the video. He makes no mention of not taking it “for safety reasons”.
The professor has since been fully vaccinated – and has also received his booster shot – and so any posts claiming otherwise are false.
A spokesperson for BioNTech told Reuters via email: “Ugur Sahin received his first vaccinations early in 2021 and the booster a couple of weeks ago.
“The text they (the social media posts) are referring to was a statement made in Dec. 2020 – it is completely outdated.”
The spokesperson also confirmed that he was given the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Likewise, the professor and his wife, who was also behind the launch of the product, told the Times in a Sep. 14. interview (here) that they got vaccinated at the end of January as “part of our campaign to immunise all our employees, to ensure that we did not have infections that would slow the pace of our work,” adding that they experienced “no side effects”.
VERDICT
False. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 using the product created by his firm and Pfizer. He has also since received a booster jab.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
私たちの行動規範：トムソン・ロイター「信頼の原則」