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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,673 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Ein Arzt des Stuttgarter Klinikums sagt, dass drei Corona-Impfungen nichts bringen und es keinen Schutz gibt.

Publisher’s rating: Falsch

The claim concerns a shortened social-media video in which Stuttgart physician Jörg Latus is presented as saying that three Covid vaccinations do not work and provide no protection. The review says the clip’s quoted statement was that patients remained at serious risk of infection despite three doses, but finds that the statement was taken out of context. Latus was a senior physician at Klinikum Stuttgart’s transplant center, and his remarks concerned transplant recipients rather than patients generally. Supporting passages: “Angeblich sage der Mediziner «eine harte Wahrheit»: Auch drei Impfungen gegen Covid-19 brächten nichts, es gebe keinen Schutz.” and “Latus bezieht sich in seinem Statement ausschließlich auf solche Personen”. The source explains that transplant recipients take immune-suppressing medication to prevent rejection of their organs. This can leave them with few or no antibodies after vaccination. In the longer ZDF report, the patients Latus discussed were those who had undergone organ transplants; some might benefit from additional doses, while others were advised to continue contact restrictions. Supporting passages: “Eine Folge ist, dass solche Patientinnen und Patienten auch trotz einer Corona-Impfung oft nur wenige oder gar keine Antikörper gegen das Virus bilden.” and “in manchen Fällen würden zusätzliche Impfungen helfen - in anderen bleibe nur, weiter Kontaktbeschränkungen vorzunehmen”. The review also reports that the shortened clip was assembled from two parts of the longer segment, and that Klinikum Stuttgart rejected the implication that Latus was generally criticizing vaccine effectiveness. The hospital said it continued to support vaccination and operated a public vaccination station in central Stuttgart. These details reinforce that the claim generalized remarks about a medically vulnerable group into a claim about vaccines as a whole. Supporting passages: “Das nun kursierende verkürzte Video ist also nicht nur aus dem Kontext des Beitrags herausgeschnitten, sondern auch aus zwei Teilen zusammengesetzt worden” and “Das Klinikum setzt auch weiter auf Impfungen”.

dpa Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Covid-19-Impfstoffe machen unfruchtbar

Publisher’s rating: Es gibt keine Hinweise darauf, dass eine Corona-Impfung unfruchtbar macht. Sie wird Schwangeren und Frauen mit Kinderwunsch explizit empfohlen, da Schwangere ein erhöhtes Risiko für einen schweren Verlauf von Covid-19 haben.

The review examines the claim that Covid-19 vaccination causes infertility, with particular attention to concerns raised about pregnancy and the ability to conceive. It reports that the proposed biological mechanism—that antibodies produced after vaccination might attack Syncytin-1, a protein important to placental formation—is not supported by the evidence it cites. Lars Dölken, a virology and immunobiology professor at the University of Würzburg, told dpa that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is not particularly similar to Syncytin-1; the review says researchers at University Hospital Jena agreed with that assessment. The review also points to studies that found no unusual pattern of miscarriages or related complications, and says that after millions of women had been infected with Covid-19, no unusual signs of impaired fertility were known. These observations address concerns about reproductive harm, though the excerpt does not provide the individual studies’ sample sizes or methods, so those details cannot be assessed here. The review’s evidence therefore supports its conclusion that the infertility claim is not substantiated, rather than proving that no individual adverse event is possible. Pregnancy-related recommendations are distinct from advice about certain other vaccines. The review says the updated German Standing Committee on Vaccination recommendations supported mRNA vaccination from the second trimester, while live vaccines such as those for rubella, measles, and mumps are not recommended during pregnancy and may warrant a waiting period when planning conception. It also reports that pregnant people face an increased risk of severe Covid-19, a relevant risk-benefit consideration in the vaccination discussion.

APA - Austria Presse AgenturHealth & medicine

Aufgrund der Omikron-Variante sind laut einer Pressekonferenz von Biontech-CEO Ugur Sahin nach den drei Impfdosen der Grundimmunisierung drei weitere Dosen notwendig.

Publisher’s rating: Davon ist in der Pressekonferenz keine Rede. Auch laut einer Biontech-Sprecherin wurde das nicht behauptet. Studien zur Effektivität der Impfstoffe gegen Omikron werden derzeit noch durchgeführt.

The claim arose from statements at a BioNTech press conference on December 8, 2021, featuring CEO Ugur Sahin, medical managing director Özlem Türecivom, and chief operating officer Sierk Poetting. The review says the conference discussed preliminary laboratory results indicating that three doses of the vaccine were needed for sufficient protection against Omicron. It explains that this meant a three-dose course, not three more doses after an already completed three-dose course. The review traces the misinterpretation to a passage at minute 29, where Sahin said BioNTech’s vaccine for Omicron should be a three-dose vaccination. Some social-media users took that wording to mean that three additional doses would follow the initial three. The review reports that the conference itself and BioNTech’s statement released the same day did not say that six doses, or the nine doses claimed in the online article, were required. The review also describes what remained unresolved at the time: BioNTech’s spokesperson said the company could not yet say how many doses would be needed for renewed immunization, or whether a booster of an Omicron-adapted vaccine would suffice, because studies were still underway. The review notes that a second booster of the existing vaccine was discussed only as a possible option if protection after three doses proved too short and an adapted vaccine was not yet available.

dpaHealth & medicine

De auteur van het boek "Understanding the omicron variant" was al in 2020 op de hoogte van de "nieuwe" coronavariant.

Publisher’s rating: Er is geen enkel bewijs dat het boek reeds in 2020 werd geschreven. Meer zelfs: er zijn meerdere indicaties die dat tegenspreken.

The claim arose from a Facebook post about *Understanding the omicron variant*, attributed to “Dr Theresa Bishop.” The post treated “Copyrights 2020,” visible on the book’s second page in an Amazon preview, as evidence that the author already knew about Omicron in 2020. The review explains that this copyright line was the basis for the inference; it does not establish when the book was actually written. The review reports that Amazon listed the book’s publication date as 5 December 2021. That was after South Africa reported Omicron’s existence to the WHO on 24 November 2021. It also says the book was self-published. The review notes that the 2020 copyright was not found in the US Copyright Office’s online catalogue, so it could not be verified, and says that a copyright statement can be printed in a book without proving when its contents were created. The review also reports that Bowker, the US body responsible for ISBN registration, had no registration data for the book’s ISBN, 979-8779168687. These details do not establish exactly when the book was written, but they leave the 2020 date unsupported and provide no reliable documentation that the author knew of Omicron then.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Photo showing the Karnal doctor who ate cow dung being admitted to a hospital

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claimed that a photo of a person lying in a hospital bed showed Karnal doctor Dr. Manoj Mittal, who had been seen eating cow dung, after he was admitted to hospital. FACTLY’s review identifies the person in the photo as Bidhan Thapa, not Mittal, and reports that Thapa died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States after a “very critical” health condition. The image therefore does not show the claimed hospitalization of Mittal. The review describes two checks relevant to that conclusion. A reverse-image search located the same photo on a GoFundMe page created in 2017; the page identified the person as Thapa and said the fundraiser would help his wife transfer his remains to Nepal. The review also reports that Mittal, when asked about the viral post, said he was healthy and had not been hospitalized. It further notes that a video report about Mittal did not show him in an ICU hospital bed.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Rekord-Todesfälle im Jahr 2021 unter Piloten. In Zusammenhang mit Corona-Impfungen treten sehr häufig Thrombosen auf.

Publisher’s rating: Es gibt keine «Rekord-Todesfälle» unter Piloten, bestätigt der Verband Alpa. Die Nebenwirkung einer speziellen Form der Thrombose nach einer Corona-Impfung ist sehr selten, betrifft also weniger als eine von 10 000 behandelten Personen.

The claim combined two assertions: that pilot deaths reached a record in 2021 and that thrombosis occurs very frequently after COVID-19 vaccination. The review examined a social-media claim based on death notices in the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) magazine, including a comparison of one notice in 2019, six in 2020 and 111 in the first nine months of 2021. It found that a page from the magazine was genuine, but that this tally did not establish a record or a rise in overall pilot deaths. The review reported that ALPA observed no higher number of deaths in 2021 than in previous years. ALPA said it had reported more pilot deaths in 2019 and 2020 than in 2021 based on information verified with families. The magazine’s notices included both active and retired pilots, and depended on relatives reporting deaths; a single issue therefore did not provide a complete count for a year. Those qualifications undermine the inference that the notices showed a record number of deaths. On thrombosis, the review contrasted the claim of high frequency with the terminology used by the European Medicines Agency and Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices: “very frequent” means at least one case in ten. It said a particular clotting disorder after vector vaccines was classified as “very rare”—less than one case per 10,000—and noted that U.S. CDC data through November 24, 2021 recorded 54 confirmed cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after 16.4 million Johnson & Johnson doses. The excerpt does not establish the frequency of every kind of thrombosis after every vaccine; its evidence concerns this specific adverse event.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Das Coronavirus und seine Folgen sind ist gleichermaßen eine Gefahr für Geimpfte und Ungeimpfte.

Publisher’s rating: Geimpfte Menschen infizieren sich deutlich seltener mit Sars-CoV-2 als ungeimpfte. Die Viruslast bei geimpften Infizierten nimmt schneller ab. Mit einer Corona-Impfung sinkt das Risiko eines schweren Krankheitsverlauf wegen Covid-19 deutlich und damit das Risiko, daran zu sterben. Es gibt keinen Hinweis auf eine generell erhöhte Sterblichkeit nach der Covid-19-Impfung.

The review examined a Facebook note circulating during Germany’s fourth COVID-19 wave. The note argued that vaccinated and unvaccinated people faced the same danger because either group could become infected, transmit the virus, or die from it; it also claimed vaccination itself could be fatal. The review assessed these assertions against evidence it attributed to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), studies of viral loads, and information from German government and public-health sources. For infection risk, the review reported that RKI estimates put the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna and AstraZeneca’s vector vaccine at about 75% against symptomatic infection with the then-dominant Delta variant. It therefore concluded that fully vaccinated people were infected less often. The review also noted that PCR studies found similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated infected people, but described research indicating that viral material declined faster in vaccinated people. It cautioned that PCR values have limits as a measure of how infectious someone is. On severe outcomes, the review said the vaccine’s main purpose was to prevent severe COVID-19 and deaths, and cited protection of up to 90% effectiveness. On vaccine-related deaths, it distinguished reports of deaths after vaccination from evidence that vaccination caused them: the Paul-Ehrlich Institute safety report listed 1,802 suspected reports involving a fatal outcome, while clarifying that reports can be temporally associated with vaccination without establishing causation. Thus, the review’s evidence does not support treating the two groups’ infection and severe-disease risks as equal, or treating those suspected reports as proof of a generally increased death risk from vaccination.

dpaHealth & medicine

Die Covid-19-Impfung befindet sich noch immer in der Testphase; die Impfpflicht verstößt gegen die Gesunderhaltungspflicht der Soldaten.

Publisher’s rating: Mit der Duldungspflicht kann die Bundeswehr ihre Soldaten verpflichten, sich einer Corona-Impfung zu unterziehen.

The review examines claims made in a December 2021 video, including that Covid-19 vaccines were “still in the testing phase” and that the order violated soldiers’ duty to maintain health. It says the vaccines were not still in a testing phase: EU vaccines had received conditional marketing authorisations during the pandemic, after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) reviewed the evidence submitted by developers. Manufacturers had to seek renewed authorisation after a year, and the EMA had extended the authorisations. The review also notes that vaccines had been administered since late December 2020 and had previously been used in clinical studies. On the order, the review cites Section 17a(2) of the Soldiers Act, which requires soldiers to tolerate medical measures against their will when they serve to prevent or combat communicable diseases, or to determine fitness for service. It says courts had confirmed this so-called duty to tolerate medical measures, most recently in December 2020, and notes that the Federal Administrative Court had recognised such a duty in 1969. The review therefore concludes that the Bundeswehr could require soldiers to undergo Covid-19 vaccination; it does not present that power as unlimited. The review reports that the Defence Ministry described the duty as supporting the Bundeswehr’s leadership capacity and operational readiness, and said Covid-19 vaccines met the requirements for safety and efficacy. It also explicitly qualifies its account: the principle of proportionality remained applicable, particularly in view of possible side effects. Its assessment addresses the legal basis for the requirement, rather than asserting that health or safety considerations were irrelevant.