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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

El Detector / Univision NoticiasHealth & medicine

Pfizer incumplió las normas de los ensayos clínicos para lograr la aprobación de su vacuna

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns whether Pfizer broke its trial protocol or altered test results to secure FDA authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine. The review describes the allegation that placebo participants were told they had not been vaccinated and were then given the vaccine, supposedly leaving no valid way to assess the vaccine. It says the trial had a vaccine group and a control group, and that participants and researchers did not know who received which injection during the blinded study. The review reports that Pfizer’s spokesperson said regulators and US health authorities authorized vaccination of the control group only after emergency authorization, once the primary efficacy endpoints had been met. Pfizer also said that vaccinating former placebo recipients did not affect the clinical-study results. The review explains that the opportunity to receive the vaccine came after the trial had demonstrated efficacy and safety, and says this step was already included in the protocol. The account cites an FDA information document dated December 10, 2020, as evidence that participants could learn whether they had received the vaccine and could be offered vaccination after authorization. It also reports that roughly 44,000 volunteers took part, about half receiving vaccine and half placebo, and that the authorization relied on a controlled, blinded clinical study. These details address the central allegation: the control group was part of the trial, while later vaccination of placebo recipients was a planned post-authorization step, not a change made to obtain approval.

dpaHealth & medicine

Noorwegen herclassificeerd COVID-19 als niet gevaarlijker dan griep.

Publisher’s rating: Deze bewering is niet juist. Het FHI is wel van mening dat COVID-19 benaderd moet worden als een seizoensgebonden luchtwegaandoening, maar zegt niet dat COVID-19 even gevaarlijk is als de griep. Dat bevestigt het instituut ook aan dpa.

The claim concerned reports that Norway’s public-health institute, the Folkehelseinstituttet (FHI), had classified COVID-19 as a disease no more dangerous than ordinary flu. The review identifies the claim’s immediate source as an article on Dissident.one, which translated a Free West Media article. It says the articles attributed the alleged classification to the FHI. The decisive evidence in the review is the FHI’s response to dpa: the institute said it had not claimed that COVID-19 was no more dangerous than ordinary flu. It clarified that its position was to approach COVID-19, at that point in the pandemic, as one of several respiratory diseases with seasonal variation, with measures requiring a similar level of societal preparedness. The institute explicitly said this did not mean that COVID-19 and flu were comparable. The review also addresses the apparent basis for the claim. It describes an interview with FHI deputy director and vaccine manager Geir Bukholm in a Norwegian newspaper, dated September 20. According to the review, a sentence in the article’s introduction said Norway was moving to a paradigm in which coronavirus was no longer more dangerous than other respiratory infections. The review says this was the newspaper writer’s addition, not a statement by Bukholm or the FHI. Thus, the reporting distinguishes the institute’s seasonal-preparedness approach from the stronger claim that COVID-19 and flu posed equivalent danger.

המשרוקית של גלובסHealth & medicine

"נשיא ארצות-הברית פתח את הבוסטר כמעט לכל מי שרוצה, לכל מי שמקבל קהל מעל גיל 18"

Publisher’s rating: נכון ברובו

The statement was made by Israel’s then-interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, during a September 25, 2021 television discussion. She said that President Joe Biden had opened boosters to almost anyone who wanted one, including people over 18 who receive the public. The review checked the U.S. rules in force at the time, rather than treating the president’s announcement as eligibility for every American. It reports that the FDA had declined to authorize boosters for the general population, but had authorized them for specified groups; Biden’s September 24 message likewise described eligibility for most people fully vaccinated with Pfizer, not all adults.

dpaHealth & medicine

Geen enkele farmaceut heeft een nieuwe aanvraag voor voorwaardelijke goedkeuring ingediend voor hun coronavaccin, dus eind dit jaar mogen ze niet meer worden gebruikt.

Publisher’s rating: De bewering dat er geen nieuwe aanvraag voor voorwaardelijke goedkeuring is ingediend door de farmaceuten achter de coronavaccins is onjuist. Deze zijn wel degelijk ingediend en worden op dit moment bekeken door het Europees Geneesmiddelenagentschap (EMA). Dat bevestigt ook een woordvoerder van het EMA.

The claim concerned EU conditional marketing authorisations for COVID-19 vaccines: it said manufacturers had not applied to renew them, so the authorisations would expire and the vaccines could no longer be used toward the end of 2021. The review says it checked the renewal status for the four vaccines then approved in the EU and reports that each application was listed on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) website as “under evaluation.” The review also reports direct confirmation from an EMA spokesperson: all marketing authorisation holders for the approved COVID-19 vaccines had submitted their annual renewal applications. That evidence contradicts the claim that no manufacturer had applied. The applications were still being assessed, however; the review says no renewal decision was yet known for any of the vaccines. Submission and approval are different stages, so the review does not establish that every authorisation would necessarily be renewed. The review explains that conditional authorisation lasts one year and can be renewed annually, with a renewal application required at least six months before expiry. It dates the first EU conditional authorisation, for Pfizer/BioNTech, to 21 December 2020, and the last, for Janssen, to 11 March 2021. It says the applications were then under review, with the EMA’s human-medicines committee assessment taking up to three months and a further decision process planned to take more than two months.

dpaHealth & medicine

Foto toont coronaprotest van vrachtwagenchauffeurs.

Publisher’s rating: De foto is misleidend. Vrachtwagenchauffeurs in Italië hadden aangekondigd te protesteren tegen de invoer van een coronatoegangsbewijs, maar deze foto heeft daar niets mee te maken.

The photo was shared on Facebook as an image of Italian truckers protesting the country’s coronavirus pass. The investigation says the accompanying claim treated the line of trucks as evidence of the action’s success. But it found that the image could not show that protest: the photo had already appeared in an article from 2007, years before the coronavirus measures at issue. That earlier article also concerned a truck blockade, but not a protest against pandemic restrictions. The shared photo therefore depicts a different event from the one claimed. The timing further distinguishes the events. Italy was due to introduce a “green certificate” from 15 October, required for workers in both the private and public sectors to enter their workplaces. On social media, some truck drivers announced plans to protest the measure with motorway blockades on 27 September. The review reports that employer organisations and trade unions distanced themselves from the action, and that large-scale protests appeared not to have taken place. These facts provide context for the online claim, but they do not make a 2007 photograph evidence of the 2021 protest. The review also notes that other images circulated online as pictures of the protest were not from that event. Its decisive evidence for this particular photo is its earlier appearance in 2007 and the different subject of the article in which it appeared.

dpaHealth & medicine

Plus d’un million d’effets secondaires des vaccins contre le Covid-19 en Europe reconnus par l’OMS.

Publisher’s rating: Cet article est trompeur. La base de données en question regroupe des signalements d’effets secondaires soupçonnés lors de l’utilisation de médicaments. Elle ne permet pas d’établir s’il existe un lien avéré entre un effet indésirable suspecté et un médicament spécifique. Cet avertissement est d’ailleurs précisé sur la page d’accueil de la base de données.

dpaHealth & medicine

Le Covid-19 désormais pas plus dangereux que la grippe, selon les autorités sanitaires norvégiennes.

Publisher’s rating: Contacté par la dpa, l’Institut norvégien de la santé publique (NIPH) a réfuté avoir tenu de tels propos. La position officielle du NIPH à l’heure actuelle est qu’il serait judicieux de commencer à aborder le Covid-19 comme l’une des nombreuses maladies respiratoires saisonnières en circulation. Mais l’institut n’a pas déclaré que le Covid-19 n’est pas plus dangereux qu’une grippe.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

FACT CHECK: කොරෝනා පාලනය වී ඇත්තේ රජය හරි තීන්දු ගත් නිසා බවට රෝසිගෙන් මෑතක දී ප්‍රකාශයක්?

Publisher’s rating: Missing Context

The claim concerned a social-media post presenting Rosy Senanayake, then Colombo’s mayor, as having recently praised the government’s COVID-19 response, with the quoted wording that control succeeded because the government made the right decisions. Fact Crescendo’s review reports that the remarks it traced were made at a Colombo Municipal Council media briefing on May 26, 2020—not recently. It says the post used her photograph and a Lankadeepa logo, and that readers were asking whether the item was old. The review says it checked whether Lankadeepa had reported such a statement and located coverage of her May 2020 briefing. It describes the circumstances she discussed: by then, no COVID-19 cases had been found within Colombo municipal limits after May 1, and she had also urged people to come into the city only for essential purposes. The review does not establish the viral post’s exact quotation as a verbatim transcript; it says her contemporaneous remarks indicated that she considered the country’s response successful. To assess whether the view was recent, the review says it searched mainstream media and social media and contacted Senanayake by telephone. It reports that she denied making such a statement recently. It also distinguishes a September statement in which she warned that the situation was severe, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in Colombo, and deaths were being reported in large numbers. The review’s account therefore supports the conclusion that an earlier statement was being recirculated as if it reflected a recent comment.

maharat-newsHealth & medicine

الملقحين كغير الملقحين معرّضين للإصابة ونقل المتحور دلتا بالدرجة نفسها؟

Publisher’s rating: صحيح

The review examines social-media claims that vaccination offered no benefit against Delta because vaccinated and unvaccinated people could become infected and transmit the virus to the same degree. It traces the claim to remarks by Anthony Fauci in a CBS interview, as reported by the review, about similar Delta levels in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The review’s evidence focuses largely on viral-load indicators among people who were already infected, rather than on whether vaccination left people with the same overall likelihood of infection. For one study, the review describes 719 people assessed between June 29 and July 31, 2021; 90% of the 122 samples that were sequenced were Delta. Among 311 vaccinated people who tested positive, most had a Ct value below 25. The researchers reportedly cultured 55 samples with Ct values below 25 from vaccinated and unvaccinated people and found virus in almost all of them. The review also cites a CDC report about a Provincetown, Massachusetts, outbreak: of 469 cases, three-quarters were in vaccinated people; both vaccinated and unvaccinated cases had relatively low Ct values, and 90% of 133 sequenced samples were Delta. These findings support the narrower point that some vaccinated people with breakthrough Delta infections had viral-load measures associated with substantial infection, and that virus was recoverable from samples in both groups. But the review provides no vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated population denominators or direct measurement of transmission rates. The outbreak’s share of cases among vaccinated people, by itself, therefore does not establish equal infection risk; nor do similar Ct findings among infected cases alone establish equal transmission overall. The review nevertheless uses these findings to support its conclusion that Delta spread readily among vaccinated people and recommends continued precautions.