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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

dpaHealth & medicine

Tientallen kinderen zijn al overleden ten gevolge van het vaccin en er lopen meer kinderen letsels op door het vaccin dan er al zijn overleden aan het coronavirus.

Publisher’s rating: De informatie in deze video is grotendeels onwaar, uit de context gehaald of misleidend. Myocarditis bestaat, maar is zeer zeldzaam en het risico op deze ziekte is groter door een besmetting met het coronavirus dan door het vaccin, dat tegen het virus beschermt. Het aantal letsels door vaccinatie en overlijdens door Covid-19 vergelijken schetst een fout beeld. De medische afbeeldingen zijn uit de context gehaald en hebben niets met het vaccin te maken.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

FACT CHECK: කොරෝනා ආසාදිතයෙකු සුපිරි වෙළඳසැලක බිම ඇද වැටී මිය ගිය අවස්ථාවක් ද?

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examined social-media posts and a video claiming that a person collapsed and died in a supermarket because of COVID-19. It identifies the footage as showing an incident at Sunrise Super in Kundasale, Kandy, on September 3. The person did collapse and die there, but the review reports that the evidence did not support the claim that he had COVID-19. The investigation says the supermarket manager told the reviewers that the store had temporarily closed because of concern about possible infection, then resumed business after police said the man did not have COVID-19. The review also reports that Pallekele police identified the deceased as 35-year-old Suresh Kumar and attributed his death to a heart attack. It separately says the local public health inspector confirmed that a PCR test showed he was not infected. Thus, the posts describe a real fatal collapse but misrepresent its cause. The review concludes that Kumar died after a heart condition worsened, not from COVID-19, and says both the local health inspector and Pallekele police confirmed this.

dpaHealth & medicine

Iemand ontving een Burger King-waardebon van de GGD bij vaccinatie

Publisher’s rating: Dit verhaal klopt niet. De GGD bevestigde aan dpa dat zij geen waardebonnen voor de Burger King of andere bedrijven uitgeeft bij het halen van de vaccinatie.

The claim concerned a Facebook post, shown in a screenshot shared by other users, that its author had received a Burger King voucher from the GGD when getting vaccinated. The post appeared to be associated with a man in Groningen province, and the location shown in the image was a Burger King in Emmen. The original post was no longer visible on the man’s profile when dpa checked. Dpa contacted him to ask whether he had posted it, but had received no answer by publication, so the review could not establish whether the post existed or what its context was. Dpa checked the voucher allegation with the relevant health-service bodies. A GGD Drenthe spokesperson said the organization neither ran nor knew of such a promotion. The spokesperson also said that offering a reward would conflict with the principle that vaccination should remain voluntary. A spokesperson for GGD GHOR, the umbrella organization for the 25 municipal health services, separately told dpa that no such voucher promotion was taking place at any GGD and that it would not fit the way the organization operates. The review also reports that searches on Twitter and Facebook found no other example of someone receiving such a voucher, and that national or regional media had not reported one. The review therefore found no support for a GGD voucher scheme, while leaving the existence and precise context of the single post shown in the screenshot unresolved.

APA - Austrian Presse AgenturHealth & medicine

Vor der Covid-Impfung gab es noch nie Impfdurchbrüche.

Publisher’s rating: Covid-19 ist nicht die erste Krankheit, die auch dagegen geimpfte Personen bekommen können. Auch das Risiko von Übertragungen durch asymptomatisch Infizierte ist von anderen Krankheiten bekannt.

The claim reviewed by the APA was that vaccine breakthroughs had never occurred before COVID-19. Its investigation treats a breakthrough as an infection—particularly a symptomatic one—despite vaccination, and says this was already a known phenomenon with several other vaccines. The review notes that vaccines can protect well without providing complete protection in every case. As examples, the APA reports that the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI) referred to “vaccine failures” with influenza vaccination, which could result in mild symptoms or go unnoticed. It also lists reported breakthroughs involving measles, pertussis, hepatitis, chickenpox and tick-borne encephalitis (FSME) vaccination. These examples directly counter the assertion that COVID-19 was the first disease for which vaccinated people could become infected. The review also distinguishes breakthroughs from transmission by people who are infected but not visibly ill. It explains that having no symptoms does not mean a person is uninfected, and cites influenza, RSV and HIV as diseases for which asymptomatic infection or transmission was already discussed. That additional point addresses the viral post’s related claim about transmission by someone who “does not have” the disease; it is separate from the evidence of pre-COVID vaccine breakthroughs.

dpaHealth & medicine

En Australie, des enfants testés positifs au Covid-19 sont séparés de force de leurs parents.

Publisher’s rating: C’est faux. La police australienne a déclaré que les évènements visibles dans cette vidéo, qui a fait l’objet de nombreux détournements, n’étaient en aucun cas liés aux tests ou aux vaccins Covid-19.

The claim arose from a widely shared video showing a young girl being pulled from the arms of a man by police officers and medical staff in Australia. The review says that Civitas Belgique circulated the video on 22 August 2021 as alleged proof that children who tested positive for Covid-19 were being separated from their parents. It also notes an important limitation: the man was often described online as the girl’s father, but that relationship had not been officially confirmed. The footage itself, which lasted just under 30 seconds, shows the child surrounded by five people who appeared from their uniforms to be police and medical personnel. The review says the exact circumstances behind the images had not been disclosed, so the video alone did not establish why the child was being removed or that the incident involved Covid-19. The decisive evidence reported was a direct denial from Victoria state police: responding on Twitter on 20 August 2021, police said the interpretation that the video showed children testing positive being separated from their parents was inaccurate, and that the scene was not related to Covid-19 tests or vaccines. Police later told the Associated Press that the incident took place at Werribee police station, about 30 kilometres from Melbourne, on 14 August 2021. They described it as a family incident unrelated to Covid-19; in a separate statement to news.com.au, police said nurses were present because of another event. Thus, the footage did show a child being taken from an adult, but the available evidence in the review does not support the claimed Covid-testing explanation.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

‘Divine words can defeat diabetes, says research’

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The post presents “Divine words can defeat diabetes, says research” as a finding that divine words can defeat diabetes. FACTLY traces the claim to a Times of India article, which attributed it to a 2018 study in the Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism. The review identifies that study as “Coping with illness: Insight from the Bhagavad Gita.” [S1]

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Es gibt lediglich bei «klar definierten Risikogruppen» schwere Corona-Verläufe oder Corona-Tote.

Publisher’s rating: Nicht nur Risikogruppen, auch junge Menschen ohne Vorerkrankung können schwer an Covid-19 erkranken oder daran sterben. Neben der Zahl der positiv auf Sars-CoV-2 getesteten Personen wurden bei politischen Entscheidungen seit Beginn der Pandemie weitere Indikatoren wie die Intensivbettenauslastung berücksichtigt.

The Facebook post made two related assertions: that severe Covid-19 cases and deaths occurred only among “clearly defined risk groups,” and that German pandemic policy relied only on confirmed cases while ignoring recovered people. The review addresses both assertions, distinguishing the higher risk faced by some groups from the claim that serious outcomes are confined to them. It reports that older people and people with conditions such as asthma, diabetes or obesity became seriously ill more often, but says healthy young people could also have severe disease or die. S1 gives the example of a 26-year-old man without pre-existing conditions and cites a Stanford University study reporting that, in France, two percent of those who died following infection were under 65 and had no underlying conditions.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

FACT CHECK: කොවිඩ් ආසාදිත කුඩා බිළිඳෙකුගේ ඡායාරුපයක් ද?

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The claim concerned a social-media post presenting a photograph of an infant as a baby with COVID-19. The investigation traced the image’s earlier use and found it had appeared in reporting about a different event in Russia: a seven-day-old baby found abandoned on a table at a children’s hospital in Berezovsky in 2007. That report described the baby as being in good health, rather than as a COVID patient. The review concluded that the photograph did not show a COVID-infected infant.