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COVID-19 vaccines do not contain ‘luciferase’

A White House correspondent for Newsmax tweeted a baseless conspiratorial claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain a “bioluminescent marker” to track people. But that’s not true. Let’s take a look at the facts.

A Nov. 1 tweet from Emerald Robinson, a White House correspondent for Newsmax, that says, “Dear Christians: the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends.” This message appears as a quote retweet of a tweet that says, “The Moderna vaccine DOES contain Luciferase.” The News Literacy Project has added a label that says FALSE.
COVID-19 vaccines do not contain a bioluminescent marker called luciferase.
COVID-19 vaccines do not contain tracking devices.
Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for Newsmax, a conservative news outlet, pushed both of these false claims in a Nov. 1 tweet.
According to the Snopes fact-checking site, “Luciferase is a genuine scientific term that refers to an enzyme capable of emitting light,” such as in fireflies.
The enzymes are commonly used in research, including some research for COVID-19 vaccines, to trace how viruses and vaccines interact with cells.
The vaccines themselves do not contain these enzymes.
The luciferase enzymes are not related to Satan or the Book of Revelation.

NewsLit takeaway

False claims about the COVID-19 vaccines containing tracking devices are among the most common and longstanding viral falsehoods about the shots, and are often baselessly connected to references in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Robinson has a historyof promoting vaccine misinformation on Twitter, where she has more than 430,000 followers. The Nov. 1 tweet (above) was removed by Twitter, and Robinson was temporarily suspended from the platform. Newsmax disavowed Robinson’s statement and later said Robinson would not appear on the air while it reviews her posts.

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