This week, readers asked Full Fact to look into emails and text messages—purportedly from the NHS—which ask people to hand over their personal and financial information in order to book coronavirus vaccination appointments.
Screenshots of these emails have also been circulated widely on social media.
This is a real scam that we should all be aware of. The real vaccine is free and the NHS will never ask for your financial details in order to receive it.
The emails themselves contain replicas of NHS Test and Trace branding, which many people may struggle to identify as fake.
Recipients are informed that they have been selected to receive the coronavirus vaccine “on the basis of family genetics and medical history”.
After clicking a link to “accept the invitation”, they are taken to an online form which asks for financial information, Action Fraud said.
In the UK, the coronavirus vaccine is only available from the NHS and always free of charge. The NHS has said it will never ask for bank account or card details, PIN numbers or banking passwords, and will never arrive unannounced at your home to administer the vaccine. You will never be asked to prove your identity by sending copies of personal documents such as passports, driving licenses, bills or pay slips.
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Last week, we spotted the viral claim that 53 people had died in Gibraltar “in the first ten days after Covid-19 vaccinations started there”.
Although the authors of these Facebook posts didn’t make an explicit causal link between the deaths and Covid vaccines, they were worded in a way which implied causation.
But linking these deaths to the vaccine is extremely misleading. There is simply no evidence of this.
The government of Gibraltar has confirmed that as of 27 January, 11,073 people had received their first dose of the vaccine. Of those, six had since died “for reasons unrelated to the vaccination and there is no evidence to link these to the vaccination in any way”.
Gibraltar started vaccinating on 10 January. On that day, authorities reported that there had been a total of 16 Covid-19 deaths in the territory since the start of the pandemic.
Ten days later, Gibraltar recorded 53 total Covid-19 deaths, which seems to be the source for the claim.
But there is no evidence that these deaths are linked to the vaccine.
As we have written before, most vaccine roll-outs have tended to prioritise the elderly and those with serious underlying health issues. It is therefore expected that some of these recipients will die at a time close to their vaccination.
At Full Fact, we know that bad information ruins lives. Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic has proved that—over and over again.
We’ve seen opportunistic scammers try to swindle us with fraudulent promises of “coronavirus relief funds”, fake Test and Trace calls. Now, they’re exploiting the mass roll-out of coronavirus vaccines.
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Full Fact has come across a claim, made on Facebook, that Scotland will contribute £17 billion to the High Speed 2 project, even though it won’t reach Scotland.
HS2 is being wholly funded by the UK government in Westminster, rather than by devolved governments.
Public finances are not calculated in such a way that the cost of a specific project is allocated to different nations.
This aside, when the UK government increases spending which only affects England, Scotland receives compensation, in proportion to its population share, to spend as the devolved parliament chooses.
Effectively, that means that all money spent on HS2 which is raised by Scottish taxes will be returned to Holyrood.
