Skip to main content

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

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

FACT CHECK: ඉදිරියේදී එන්නට නියමිත කොවිඩ් ප්‍රභේද ගැන වාර්තාවක් ලීක්වෙයි?

Publisher’s rating: False

The review investigated social-media posts claiming that COVID-19 variants had been planned in advance and would be announced on scheduled dates. The posts cited a supposed report bearing the logos of the World Health Organization (WHO), Johns Hopkins University and the World Economic Forum. The review says its examination found that those organizations had not jointly published such a report, and that the posts supplied no official source for the alleged 2019 list. It also compared dates and names in the circulating schedule against information about variant identification. The schedule placed Lambda in December 2022, but the review reports that Lambda was first identified in Peru in December 2020. It says Omicron was identified in November 2021, rather than being planned for introduction in May 2022. The schedule also forecast an Omega variant in 2023, while the review says no such variant had been named at the time. These discrepancies undermine the schedule’s portrayal of future variants as prearranged announcements. The review further says WHO’s variant names use Greek letters, and reports that Nu and Xi were skipped before Omicron for stated naming reasons—not, as the post suggested, because they were scheduled future variant names. It also records comments from two health experts who rejected the alleged report as false or baseless, and an update in which a WHO country-office communications officer said the circulating variant names were not issued by WHO. Taken together, the review’s checks found no evidence for the claimed joint report and identified conflicts between the schedule and the variant chronology described in the review.

dpaHealth & medicine

En Italie, 97 % des morts du Covid-19 sont décédés d’autre chose.

Publisher’s rating: C’est faux. Un rapport de l’Institut national italien de la santé a bien conclu que 2,9 % des patients dont le décès a été attribué au Covid-19 ne présentaient aucune comorbidité. Mais cela ne veut pas dire que les 97,1% restants sont morts de leurs problèmes de santé sous-jacents, et non du Covid-19.

dpaHealth & medicine

Het WEF schreef al op 12 juli 2021 over de omikronvariant

Publisher’s rating: Het klopt niet dat de omikronvariant al in juli 2021 werd ontdekt. Het artikel waar de Twittergebruiker aan refereert wordt eens in de zoveel tijd voorzien van nieuwe informatie. In juli werd er in dit artikel nog niet over de omikronvariant gesproken.

The claim arose in a Twitter exchange with Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst. A user asked why, if Omicron was new, a World Economic Forum (WEF) page dated 12 July 2021 appeared to describe that very variant; the user shared screenshots, which also circulated on Facebook. The screenshot showed a WEF article titled “Explainer: This is how scientists detect new variants of COVID-19,” with the date 12 July 2021 and text about B.1.1.529, the technical designation for Omicron. The review’s central finding is that the page had been updated after its original publication, so the screenshot did not establish that the variant was discussed in July. To check the page’s history, the review says it consulted earlier versions preserved in internet archives. In the archived version from 12 July, Omicron was not mentioned; the article focused on the Delta variant. The review found a version that included information about B.1.1.529 on 26 November 2021. WEF’s page later added a notice explaining that the article had been updated on 26 November to include information about the new variant, and the article’s displayed date and URL were subsequently changed. The review notes that the update disclosure was added only after the version containing Omicron had appeared, creating an opportunity for confusion. The review also gives relevant chronology: South African scientists first reported B.1.1.529 to the World Health Organization on 24 November 2021, and the earliest known infection was on 9 November. Those dates concern reporting and the earliest known infection, respectively; they do not establish where the variant originated. Taken together with the archived page history, they support the conclusion that the July date was the article’s original publication date, not evidence that WEF had written about Omicron then.

dpaHealth & medicine

En Italie, 97 % des morts du Covid-19 sont décédés d’autre chose.

Publisher’s rating: Cette assertion n'est pas correcte. Un rapport de l’Institut national italien de la santé a bien conclu que 2,9 % des patients dont le décès a été attribué au Covid-19 ne présentaient aucune comorbidité. Mais cela ne veut pas dire que les 97,1% restants sont morts de leurs problèmes de santé sous-jacents, et non du Covid-19.

dpaHealth & medicine

Deze commentaar op een HLN-artikel roept op om een klopjacht op mensen die tegen vaccinatie zijn te organiseren.

Publisher’s rating: Deze commentaar is nooit gepubliceerd op hln.be. De screenshot van de commentaar is dan ook een vervalsing.

The claim concerns a screenshot circulating on social media that appeared to show a comment beneath an article on Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN). The comment called for a “klopjacht” on people opposed to vaccination and taking their children away with police assistance. The review says the screenshot prompted criticism of HLN for allegedly allowing the comment to appear. The key issue it investigates is whether the comment was actually published on the news site. The review reports that HLN said the comment was not published under one of its articles. Dimitri Antonissen, the outlet’s deputy editor-in-chief, told dpa that the purported author, Mark Dewaelemaecker, and the comment could not be found in HLN’s comments database. The review also checked the comment thread for the article identified as the source: the comment immediately above the relevant reply differed from the one shown in the screenshot, and later comments did not appear to respond to the alleged post. The review further notes that the versions of the screenshot it found appeared to be copies of the same image: each showed “3 uur geleden” and had the same cropping at the bottom. Taken together with HLN’s statement and the discrepancies in the article’s comment thread, the evidence supports the conclusion that the screenshot was fabricated, rather than a genuine HLN comment.