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Publications claiming to offer evidence that Margaret Keenan, 90, the first recipient of the COVID-19 vaccine in the UK, died in 2008, have been circulating online. This is false: the so-called “evidence” is a birthday memory that refers to another woman with the same name.
The claim has been shared in various ways since December 8 (here, here, here, here, and here), the day Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine outside of a trial in Coventry, England. (here).
Keenan is a retired grandmother and jewelry assistant turning 91 next week, making her top of the priority list for coronavirus vaccination (here, here).
However, the claims allege that Keenan’s death is recorded on an obituary and memoir website (here). A widely shared screenshot included a Facebook comment claiming: “I’ve been doing my research on that woman who was supposed to have received the first vaccine today … she died in 2008 and is on Funeral Notices.co.uk” .
The implication is that the woman who was vaccinated on December 8 was not the real Keenan. This idea plays on unfounded conspiracy theories that the vaccination was staged, Keenan was a “crisis actor” and has connections to the Illuminati, discredited by Reuters here.
It is purely coincidental that there is an entry for another woman named Margaret Keenan from Coventry on the obituary and memoriam site (here). The website has a searchable archive of 4,798,469 listings and there are many results for different people with the same name.
The screenshot in the social media posts does not show a death notice, but rather a keepsake posted in 2008 to commemorate the birthday of a woman who had died two years earlier, according to the website. The memoir says it was written by family members, including the “devoted children Ailish, Julie, Maggie.” Margaret Keenan, who was vaccinated on December 8, has a daughter named Sue (here).
VERDICT
False. Margaret Keenan received the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial in the English city of Coventry on December 8. A different woman with the same name is remembered through a souvenir published in 2008.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
