Skip to content

Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021

Did the CEO of Pfizer cancel a trip to Israel ‘because he was not vaccinated’?

Kaiyah Clarke, Lead Stories
no

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called off a scheduled trip because, while he had received his first shot, he was still waiting for the second shot of the two-step Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. 

A misleading claim on social media was made in August 2021 — almost five months after Bourla canceled the trip and then received his second shot. The claim raised implications by declaring that Bourla "had to cancel" the trip, and emphasized in all-capital letters "BECAUSE HE WAS NOT VACCINATED." 

The Jerusalem Post accurately reported on March 7, 2021, that Bourla called off a visit to Israel because he had received only the first of two vaccination shots. The article cited Bourla as having said that he did not want to "cut in line" for the vaccine earlier.

According to Bourla, he got the second shot as scheduled in March.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.