IN early December 2019, in the midst of a measles outbreak, the South Pacific island nation of Samoa ordered a two-day countrywide lockdown to complete a compulsory mass vaccination programme. In a three-month period, nearly three-quarters of Samoa’s 200,000 people were inoculated.
The circumstances surrounding this vaccination campaign, in particular its timing and the use of a lockdown, have given rise to the speculation that SARS CoV-2 (coronavirus) was released during that outbreak using an experimental measles vector Covid vaccine. Measles vector vaccines are measles viruses genetically engineered to contain material from other pathogens.
