The Philippines has not issued an arrest warrant for Bill Gates over Covid-19 vaccines

“BREAKING NEWS: Bill Gates arrest warrant issued in Philippines for ‘Premeditated Murder’ for his Vaccination Program. Excess deaths have spiked in the aftermath of the vaccination drive in the Philippines with thousands of citizens dying unnecessarily and many more injured (sic),” reads a tweet from March 5, 2023.

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Screenshots of the false Twitter thread, taken on March 7, 2023

The tweet links to an article published by the US-based site News Punch, which has a reputation for sharing false information.

The News Punch article makes several claims, including that "hundreds of thousands of citizens" died following the roll-out of the vaccine drive in the Philippines.

Additionally, the article also claims that the Philippines "banned" Gates from entering the country and requested that Interpol issue an arrest notice for the Microsoft co-founder.

The court which allegedly made that request is referred to in the article as the Heinous Crimes Court, located in the country's capital, Manila.

The article also claims that the Philippines halted a UN agency tetanus vaccine program after discovering it was "laced with an abortion drug."

The claims were repeated in Dutch on the website Frontnieuws, which AFP Fact Check has previously debunked here and here, and shared hundreds of times on Twitter and Facebook.

They also circulated in German, French, Portuguese and Spanish social media posts with thousands of shares.

Misinformation peddlers frequently target Gates online, particularly with Covid-19 conspiracy theories. AFP Fact Check has debunked a number of those claims, including here and here.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has played a significant role in the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including in vaccine development.

The Covid-19 pandemic claimed more than 6.8 million lives between January 2020 and March 2023, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) dashboard.

But the claim that the Philippines issued an arrest warrant for Gates for "premeditated murder" over helping to develop a Covid-19 vaccine is false.

‘No such court’

The Philippine court that allegedly issued an arrest warrant for Gates, mentioned by both Frontnieuws and News Punch, does not exist.

“There's no such court named ‘Major Crime Court’ or ‘Heinous Crimes Court’ in the Philippines,” Philippine Supreme Court representative Attorney Brian Hosaka told AFP Fact Check on March 8, 2023, further describing the false claims as “ridiculous."

The Supreme Court of the Philippines also told AFP Fact Check that the Regional Trial Courts (RTCs) in the capital Manila and its suburbs have not issued an arrest warrant for Gates.

“We would like to inform you that upon verification by the Office of the Court Administrator with the RTCs in (Metro Manila cities) the cities of Manila, Quezon City, Makati, Pasig, Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Marikina, Malabon, Taguig, Valenzuela and Navotas, there is no case pending before them and there is no warrant of arrest issued against Bill Gates,” read the email.

The Supreme Court added that the country had abolished its “heinous crime courts” on August 24, 2004.

According to a 2006 senate report, these courts were abolished because of relatively low caseloads and for putting judges at risk of being easily identified by vindictive litigants.

Ten judges were killed from 1999 to 2006 “while under the performance of their official duties”, reads the senate document.

“Heinous crimes” are now tried by various regional trial courts.

No ban

The Philippines Bureau of Immigration told AFP Fact Check that Gates has not been banned from entering the country, as claimed.

And since there is no arrest warrant for him, the Philippines has not requested that Interpol issue a red notice for his arrest.

A red notice is “a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action”, the Interpol website explains.

On March 31, 2023, Gates was not on Interpol’s red notice list (archived here).

Unsupported figures

The article shared in the post falsely claims Gates was wanted in connection with “hundreds of thousands of deaths” from the Covid-19 vaccine, but there is no source for this figure, nor is it supported by official data.

This Philippines’ Food and Drug Administration report (archived here) shows that more than 170 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines were administered in the country from March 2021 to January 31, 2023.

In the same period, nearly 2,800 people who had been vaccinated died — but this does not mean the vaccine was the cause.

“The reports of fatal outcome do not necessarily mean that the vaccine caused the events. Underlying conditions or pre-existing medical conditions causing fatal events are usually coincidental on the use of the vaccine,” reads the report.

The Philippines FDA said that its figures are taken from a national database that “includes reports from various epidemiology surveillance units (ESUs) of the Department of Health (DOH), vaccination sites, hospitals, patients/consumers, and EUA holders”.

No 'spike' in deaths from vaccine

The Philippines started vaccinations against Covid-19 in March 2021, and the false claims said that excess deaths spiked after that.

However, Philippines statistics on Our World In Data (archived here) show that in April 2021, there was a peak in daily confirmed deaths from Covid-19, not from the vaccine against the virus.

Data from the Philippines Statistics Authority (archived here) echoed that Covid-19, not vaccines, was a leading cause of death in 2021, with the most cases registered in September 2021.

“Deaths due to Covid-19 virus identified and Covid-19 virus not identified, when combined, accounted for 112,772 or 12.8 percent of total deaths, making it the second leading cause of death in 2021,” read the statistics authority’s report.

It added that the leading cause of death was heart disease.

More than 66,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the Philippines, according to this archive of the WHO dashboard.

Tetanus vaccines in the Philippines

The false claims also state that the Philippines halted a UNICEF tetanus vaccination programme in 1995. This is misleading.

Media reports from 1995 (archived here) from the Inter Press Service show that a Manila judge issued a “temporary restraining order” against the tetanus vaccination programme.

This decision came as fears spread that the vaccine contained a hormone that possibly caused miscarriages and led to involuntary sterilisation.

However, the programme resumed, and in 2017, the Philippines DOH and UNICEF announced that after a 30-year campaign, the country had reached “Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) status".

This status means there was less than one case of neonatal tetanus per 1,000 live births in every province or city every year (archived here).

The WHO says nearly all cases of tetanus – which causes painful muscle contractions – occur in people who have never been vaccinated (archived here).