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People Are Getting HIV Positive After Taking This COVID-19 Vaccine, But How?

Many countries like Cuba, Vietnam, Russia have already been vaccinating their citizens – while USA just started with vaccinating their politicians and prominent figures first. Then they’ll plan to move on to their citizens.

Meanwhile, Australia’s attempts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine has severely backfired, as it was found that the vaccine is making people HIV positive.

But the vaccine doesn’t contain the virus

The University of Queensland has scrapped the clinical trials for their UQ/CSL vaccine. This happened after the volunteers for the vaccine started showing positive for HIV.

Researchers have declared that these are “false positives” – meaning that people are showing positive when they are not actually infected. Further studies showed that the volunteers did not have HIV before, and the vaccine didn’t have the HIV virus either.

This is why people are testing HIV positive

Image Credit: Oxford

But here comes the twist – the COVID vaccine uses a “molecular clamp” technology that was made using some HIV protein. These proteins are the ones that triggered antibodies in the immune system, and it was picked up by the HIV tests.

The vaccine is halted now because if a lot of people had gotten it, they would have tested positive for HIV – spreading a wide panic even when there was no real infection.

No more funds for this vaccine

Now the government of Australia has canceled its grant to the UQ/CSL vaccine – now the future of this vaccine hangs mid-air. Instead, they have decided to import the formula of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and then pay CSL to make 20 million copies of it.

Australians will also be given other vaccines such as the Novavax and Pfizer/BioNTech if they prove to be safe.

Should you be worried about getting HIV from this vaccine?

Image Credit: Forbes

The “molecular clamp” used in this vaccine is an HIV protein taken from the virus itself. It is a string of 80 amino acids, and it cannot cause HIV infection or AIDS by itself.

But it still triggers an HIV positive response because our body’s immune system recognizes it as a virus and creates antibodies to fight it.

Somehow the scientists knew that this would happen and they warned the volunteers, but the company thought it was a risk that should be taken. But eventually, the vaccine has been halted because this news has leaked and it means people would be unwilling to take the vaccine.

 

 

Featured Image Courtesy: POZ

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