UK-based Kenya preacher charged over fake Covid cure

LONDON - A Kenyan preacher based in the UK has been charged with fraud for selling what he said was a Covid-19 remedy.

Bishop Climate Irungu Wiseman sold a bottle with a mixture of oils for £91 ($125).

He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also included unfair trading offences, in a court in London.

Wiseman made videos that he circulated online claiming the oils were a cure for Covid-19.

There is no cure for coronavirus, according to the World Health Organisation ( WHO).

Wiseman runs the Bishop Climate Ministries, which is part of the Kingdom Church located in south London.

Meanwhile, the US has sent nearly half a million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Rwanda, White House spokesman Kevin Munoz has tweeted.

It included part of “500 million shots pledged and purchased this summer” by President Joe Biden's administration for the Covax initiative, which delivers vaccines to poorer countries, he said.

Rwanda, which saw infections spike in July because of the Delta variant, has vaccinated almost a million people since February.

And Nigeria has received about 700, 000 Covid-19 vaccine doses donated by the UK.

The government also announced it has bought close to 30 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as part of efforts to ramp up vaccinations against the virus.

Earlier this year, the WHO warned that the world faced a "catastrophic moral failure" because rich nations had been hoarding Covid vaccines and urged them to donate jabs to poorer nations.