The Twitter account belonging to a journalist-spokesman for the Chinese government media broadcaster, China Global Television Network (CGTN), Liu Xin, posted disinformation in a tweet about COVID vaccines that included a suggestion that the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID vaccine had killed recipients of it in Germany.
According to the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Germany, the elderly people who died were “probably due to the patients’ underlying diseases including carcinomas, kidney deficiencies and Alzheimer’s, not the inoculation” – and not as a result of the vaccination itself.
In December 2020, Canadian intelligence agency CSIS warned that China, Russia and Iran are spreading disinformation about COVID-19. According to a story by Global News, the declassified CSIS report stated that China “is focused on a propaganda campaign that protects its own reputation and domestic legitimacy while touting its pandemic aid abroad.”
The individual who spread the disinformation, Liu Xin, is a reporter for Chinese government owned and controlled media channel, CGTN. Her account has 235k followers and the disinformation tweet was retweeted 105 times as of January 19, 2021.
