Covid-19 vaccine falsely linked to tuberculosis spike in Malaysia
- Published on February 27, 2026 at 06:11
- 2 min read
- By Najmi Mamat, AFP Malaysia
A rise in tuberculosis cases in Malaysia triggered social media posts falsely claiming that the bacteria responsible for the disease were deliberately inserted into Pfizer's Comirnaty Covid-19 vaccine for "depopulation" purposes. A spokesperson for Pfizer said the claim is false, adding that its vaccine is synthetic and does not contain live bacteria.
"Dr Sucharit Bhakdi says that the tuberculosis bacteria is in the Covid-19 vaccine..it was deliberately inserted by Pfizer for depopulation purposes," reads a Malay-language Facebook post shared on February 18, 2026.
"The Ministry of Health Malaysia is the biggest liar," the post goes on to say.
The post cites retired microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi, a former professor at Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz who has repeatedly spread false claims about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bhakdi had previously predicted that the Covid-19 jabs would cause "an upsurge of tuberculosis worldwide, especially in those countries where the tuberculosis bacterium has been lying dormant in the bodies of these people".
His claim resurfaced in a January 2026 Substack post, linked to claims that messenger RNA vaccines such as Pfizer's Covid-19 shot damage the body's immune system -- a narrative AFP has repeatedly debunked.
The claim also spread elsewhere on Facebook after Malaysia logged more than 3,000 tuberculosis infections since January 2026 (archived link).
The disease spreads through the air, and Malaysian health authorities urged the public to wear masks and seek medical attention if they experienced prolonged coughing (archived link).
Tuberculosis has been present in the Southeast Asian country since the early 20th century and its Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine has been administered to newborns since 1961 (archived here and here).
But the disease is not present in the Covid-19 vaccines made by US drugmaker Pfizer.
Synthetic vaccine
This narrative is the latest in a wave of misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines, which researchers estimate have saved millions of people.
A Pfizer spokesperson told AFP in an email dated February 25, 2026, that the vaccine "does not contain any live virus and is completely synthetic".
"Since December 2020, more than five billion doses have been distributed globally of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which continues to demonstrate a favourable safety and efficacy profile supported by extensive real-world evidence as well as by clinical, non-clinical, pharmacovigilance, and manufacturing data," the spokesperson said.
The vaccine's full list of ingredients, made publicly available by the World Health Organization (WHO), does not include the tuberculosis bacterium among its components (archived link).
Virologist Professor Dong-Yan Jin of the University of Hong Kong also dismissed the claims.
"mRNA vaccines contain mRNA but not live pathogens. Tuberculosis is caused by live bacteria that are not present in mRNA vaccines," he said in an email dated February 24, 2026.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about vaccination here.
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