Authors
An article posted on Toronto Today said that Vladimir Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, died due to unexpected side effects after inoculating herself with Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik.
The article also states that she “suffered a rise in temperature shortly after her second injection, and then suffered a seizure. Doctors were not able to reverse the side-effects of the vaccine, and she was pronounced dead late yesterday evening.”
Fact Check/ Verification
The claim on Katerina, daughter of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, being dead comes just days after Putin announced that Russia became the first country in the world to register a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. He also mentioned that one of his daughters has been inoculated with Sputnik, the vaccine developed by the Russian Defense Ministry and Gamaleya Research Institute.
Affirming that the vaccine has “passed all the necessary tests,” Putin said that his daughter had a slight fever after the second shot, but it was all ok and “she’s feeling well and has high number of antibodies,” reported LiveMint.
However, he did not mention which of his two daughters took the vaccine.
Keeping this in mind, with regard to Toronto Today’s article that claims Katerina to be the one inoculated with Sputnik, we found no other credible evidence to support this claim. Nor is there any credible announcement from Russian officials or news agencies on Putin’s daughter dying from this vaccine.
Although many scientists have shown concern over the vaccine being offered before the final stage testing (Phase 3 trials) is completed. You can read more details about this vaccine on Science News.
TorontoToday.net posted an update on the same article later. It reads:
“Snopes and a variety of other fact checkers attacked the claims made in this article. It is important to note, despite labelling the claim as false, none of the fact-checking websites actually disproved the claim that Putin’s daughter died after her second dose of Sputnik V. It is important to note Putin’s Daughter has not made a public appearance since the claim was made. Further evidence is needed to completely debunk the original claim. Once she is seen in public, and the video can be independently verified, it can be said the original claim was inaccurate. Until then, this file has been updated to “conflicting”.”
The website also posted the following disclaimer:
“This article has been labelled as a Conspiracy File, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Toronto Today.”
This isn’t the first time misleading information related to Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine has been published/ shared. Recently, NewsChecker debunked a social media post which claimed that Russia is gifting Pakistan one million COVID vaccines and it’s been called “Human Trial Phase 3” by the World Health Organisation.
We also verified another claim related to Putin’s daughter taking the vaccine. You can read our fact check on it here.
Conclusion
Toronto Today’s claim on Katerina, Putin’s daughter being dead after taking Russia’s new COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik, is false. We found no credible information from Russian officials or new organisations supporting this claim.
Result: False
Our Sources
Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/russia-approves-coronavirus-vaccine-scepticism-200811110233722.html
APNews: https://apnews.com/fcda62ad992db414d65f23b2adb78e44
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