Verdict: False
In their Thursday 6 November 2025 issue, the New Vision published a story with a headline, “HIV Vaccine to cost Shs100,000” while referring to a new injection Lenacapavir, expected to be supplied to Ugandan health facilities in the coming few months.
While the new vision would issue a correction on their X (formerly twitter) platform later that day, many Ugandans continue posting that soon the country will receive a vaccine against the disease that has more than 700 people getting newly infected each week. Referring to Lenacapivir as a vaccine, one TikTok user goes ahead to say, Ugandans are now free to go and engage in sexual activity immediately after receiving the purported vaccine.
However, Lenacapivir is not a vaccine. Ugandawired spoke to Dr Flavia Kiweewa Matovu, a HIV researcher who was part of a team of experts who studied the injection in clinical trials which happened in Uganda and South Africa.
Kiweewa, a lead scientist on the study and based at the Makerere University John Hopkins University (MUJHU) Joint Research Collaboration says there is currently no approved vaccine or cure for HIV. Lenacapivir, a twicely yearly injection is a Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) offered to people at high risk of HIV infection to prevent them from acquiring the virus.
“ The way the vaccine works is that you get a drug and inject or deliver it to someone at a given schedule and then it induces an immune response to fight off a virus. For some vaccines, you give it once and get life time protection but PrEP works differently. It’s medication that you have to give consistently. Once you skip it, you will get infected”.
The scientist further explains that in fact, Lenacapivir as an anti-retroviral drug was already being used as treatment for multi-drug resistant HIV in some countries including in the United States before it was studied and approved for use as a twice yearly PrEP injection.
Details about the study on the injection in Uganda are published on the MUJHU website. The claim that Lenacapivir injection is a vaccine is false.
