COVID-19 vaccine researcher's comment misrepresented as fertility warning | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·3 min read
5

The claim: Professor admits that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility

A Feb. 5 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shares a video of an interview with a researcher about COVID-19 vaccines.

"Don't forget, these vaccines aren't likely to completely sterilize the population,” says Dr. Sir John Bell, an Oxford University immunologist working on a COVID-19 vaccine.

The caption reads, “When you say that quiet part out loud!” and includes hashtags about sterilization and depopulation.

The video was liked more than 600 times in a week.

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Our rating: False

Bell used the term “sterilize” in reference to killing a pathogen, not causing infertility. The post misstates the meaning of the term in the comment. There is no evidence COVID-19 vaccination affects fertility.

Medical terminology misrepresented

The clip comes from a nearly 9-minute interview posted Aug. 24, 2020, by Channel 4 in the U.K., with presenter Jon Snow interviewing Bell about a trial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that was underway at the time. Bell responded to a question about when vaccines could become available with caveats about the challenges of testing and measuring the efficacy of vaccines but never discussed potential impacts on reproduction.

Here's what he said:

“A lot of this depends on the intensity of infection. So, in order to get a readout, you have to have a certain number of incident cases in the control vaccine population. And that then tells you that you can look at the real vaccinated population and see whether they’ve been protected. So, I’m hoping that’s going to happen pretty smartly this autumn.

Social media posts misrepresenting Bell’s remarks have been circulating since at least 2021, when he told the Australian Associated Press in an email, “I was referring to the ability of the vaccines to completely eliminate viral replication – i.e. sterilize – and (it) had no relevance to fertility.”

The term “sterilizing immunity” is used by medical professionals to describe how vaccines combat a disease. A 2023 paper noted that although unequal distribution of vaccines and SARS-CoV-2’s ability to quickly mutate prevented sterilizing immunity from occurring, the vaccines were able to “protect efficiently.”

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The underlying suggestion that COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility problems, including miscarriages, has also been proven false. USA TODAY has previously debunked claims that misrepresented data in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System to imply the vaccines were leading to an increase in stillbirths and miscarriages, as well as a claim Pfizer documents showed 44% of pregnant women in a study of its vaccine had miscarriages.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a review of research that shows no evidence COVID-19 vaccination affects fertility. One of the featured studies found that COVID-19 vaccination of either partner did not affect the likelihood of becoming pregnant, while other research found no impact on male fertility after receiving an mRNA vaccine. 

USA TODAY could not reach the social media user who shared the claim for comment.

Lead Stories also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Doctor's 'sterilization' remark was about stopping virus | Fact check