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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.

13,674 published reviews in this topic

Fact CrescendoHealth & medicine

Claim: Bhopal picture circulating as Chennai Nandambakkam covid 19 treatment center

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerned a photograph of a large hall lined with beds, shared as showing 800 oxygen-equipped beds at Chennai’s Nandambakkam Trade Centre. Fact Crescendo’s review says Chennai was preparing such facilities, but the image being circulated had also appeared as a photograph of a quarantine centre in Bhopal. The review therefore investigated the photograph’s provenance, rather than disputing that Chennai was setting up beds.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

FACT CHECK: ලංකාවේ කොරෝනා ආසාදිත කුඩා දැරියක් අසාද්‍ය වූ අවස්ථාවක්ද?

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The claim attached to the video was that it showed a girl in Sri Lanka critically ill from COVID-19, and that the situation supported calls to close the country. The review investigated that specific video. It reports that the footage was shared with descriptions saying the child was struggling to breathe because of COVID-19, while its investigation identified her as a Sri Lankan child being treated in Kuwait, not a patient in a Sri Lankan hospital. The review describes several checks of the footage and its circumstances. It says a nurse speaks Malayalam, and notes that the person accompanying the girl appears to be a family member. It also explains that the child was not wearing the protective equipment the review expected of staff treating a COVID-19 patient, and that an accompanying person would not ordinarily be admitted to a COVID-19 treatment area. A paediatric specialist consulted by the review said the symptoms could be consistent with a seizure or other conditions affecting the brain, rather than establishing COVID-19. The decisive evidence came from the child’s father, whom the review says it contacted with assistance from the Factseeker fact-checking team. He told the reviewers that his roughly two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had been hospitalized in Kuwait after a febrile seizure on May 4, and that he recorded the video to show her condition to a doctor. The review says it compared the child’s clothing in the video with other photographs supplied by her father. It concludes that the video showed an emergency caused by a seizure, not COVID-19, and that the girl was in a Kuwait hospital rather than one in Sri Lanka.

dpaHealth & medicine

Hugo de Jonge zegt in een interview met het AD dat het sterven van mensen door vaccinatie is ingecalculeerd.

Publisher’s rating: De voorpagina is gefotoshopt. Deze kop en dit citaat hebben niet echt in het AD gestaan. Het is een getrukeerde versie van de voorpagina van 29 januari 2021. Op de daadwerkelijke voorpagina is wel een artikel over de kritiek op het vaccinatiebeleid te lezen. Het citaat over het incalculeren van sterfte stond daarentegen niet in het werkelijke artikel. Er is tevens nergens anders bewijs te vinden dat De Jonge dit in een interview met een andere krant heeft gezegd.

The claim concerns a purported Algemeen Dagblad front page attributing to Hugo de Jonge the statement that deaths during vaccination had been “incalculaged.” The review identifies the image as a manipulated version of the AD’s 29 January 2021 front page. It says the real edition did carry an article about criticism of the vaccination policy, but not the disputed headline or quotation. To check the image’s provenance, the review compared it with the article published online by AD journalists Edwin van der Aa and Jan Hoedeman on 29 January. The online article’s three main points resembled text visible in the image. The review also reports that dpa spoke to Van der Aa, who said he did not recall the quotation and that it was not in the article the journalists had written. The review further says dpa obtained the layout of the actual front page through Van der Aa. That layout matched the circulated image apart from the headline and quotation beneath De Jonge’s photograph: the real headline was “De Jonge belooft beterschap.” The review found no other Dutch newspaper article containing the alleged statement and concluded there was no evidence De Jonge made it in an interview with another newspaper.

dpaHealth & medicine

In Oeganda waren er slechts 334 coronadoden, omdat ze daar hydroxychloroquine innemen als 'snoepjes' tegen malaria.

Publisher’s rating: Het bericht is fout en gedateerd. Oeganda bleef relatief gespaard, maar niet door het gebruik van hydroxychloroquine. Het geneesmiddel wordt ook al enige tijd niet meer gebruikt als eerste geneesmiddel voor de behandeling van malaria, en het is geen preventief geneesmiddel. In mei 2021 stond het totaal aantal coronadoden in het land op 346.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin received approval to vaccinate children above 12 years

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examined a social-media post asserting that Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin had been approved for children above 12 years of age. It compared that assertion with the vaccine’s fact sheet and government statements on who was eligible for vaccination in India. The review says the fact sheet specified restricted emergency use for people aged 18 and older, and that the Press Information Bureau had said no approval had been given to vaccinate children.