FACT CHECK GB News presenter makes incorrect claims about Covid deaths
A clip from Dan Wootton’s GB News show has been viewed nearly half a million times on social media. In it, the presenter makes this false claim:
“While the media talks a lot of the 150,000 deaths, perhaps they should have been talking about the number of people who died 'of Covid' not 'with Covid'. That was just 17,371 up to the end of quarter three 2021.”
But during that time-frame, 131,762 deaths were registered in England and Wales with Covid as the underlying cause (i.e ‘of Covid’).
Mr Wootton’s figure refers to those who died of Covid-19 and had no pre-existing conditions. The ONS has called the use of this figure “highly misleading,” continuing to say:
“For those people dying from COVID-19, the most common pre-existing condition was diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic condition, that is serious and may make a person more vulnerable to other health problems, but this does not mean they were at risk of dying from it.”
This claim is popular online. On Monday, David Davis MP added to the chorus of social media users who described the data incorrectly on Twitter.
✔️ Having previously got it wrong at PMQs and in broadcast interviews, Boris Johnson got his employment statistics right for the second consecutive week. He’s right there are around 400,000 more people on payrolls now than just before the pandemic began.
❌ The Culture Secretary twice got this stat wrong on Twitter over the weekend, claiming there were 420,000 more people in employment in total. When you include the self-employed, there are 600,000 fewer in paid work now than there were before the pandemic began.
Our work on this isn’t over. In accordance with the ministerial code, the Prime Minister must still correct the official parliamentary record.
A fake tweet purporting to be from an Australian health official has been shared widely on social media. Edited to make it look like it was from New South Wales’ chief health officer, the ‘tweet’ claims three children have died in the vaccine roll-out, declaring this “a better result than expected.”
But Dr Chant tweeted nothing of the sort.
The latest data shows that out of Australia’s 46 million administered doses, 11 deaths have been linkedto the vaccine. The youngest person whose death has been linked to a vaccine, as of 28 November, was a 34 year old woman.
This isn’t the only false claim about Australian children dying of the vaccine doing the rounds on social media. One particularly viral example claimed a seven-year-old called Lachlan Leary had died in Sydney.
On investigation, it turned out that the hospital at which he was claimed to have died had no record of treating any child with that description, and the New South Wales Ministry of Health said it could not locate any record of such an incident.
