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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

FACTLYHealth & medicine

30-second breathing exercise can detect the COVID-19 virus in the body

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examined a social-media video presenting a 30-second breathing exercise as a way to check for COVID-19. In the video, a point moves between marks labelled A and B; the post says that holding one’s breath for that interval means the person is not infected. The review identifies that specific claim as false, rather than treating breath-holding as a diagnostic test. To assess whether the exercise was an approved self-diagnostic method, the review says it searched for such a technique and found that WHO had approved PCR, rapid antigen and antibody tests to diagnose COVID-19. It further reports that WHO had not approved any breathing exercise for this purpose. The cited WHO clarification about an earlier, similar 10-second exercise said that holding one’s breath for 10 seconds or more without coughing or discomfort does not establish that someone is free of COVID-19 or another lung disease. The review also cites an earlier Indian instance involving a similar 10-second video: it says India’s Press Information Bureau called that claim false. It gives a further reason breath-holding is not a reliable indicator, quoting infectious-disease specialist Faheem Younus’s explanation that many young people with COVID-19 could hold their breath longer than 10 seconds, while some older people without the virus could not. Together, these points address the video’s proposed inference: being able to complete the exercise does not establish whether a person has COVID-19.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Video of a health care worker administering an empty syringe to a man in India

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video presented as showing a health care worker administering an empty syringe to a man in India. FACTLY reports that the incident depicted did not take place in India: it happened in Mexico, so the video was being shared with the wrong location. The review describes how it traced the footage. A reverse-image search of screenshots led to a Spanish-language news article reporting the same video and placing the incident at the National Polytechnic Institute in Zacatenco, Mexico City. The review says that the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and Mexico City’s Secretariat of Health issued a statement acknowledging the mistake and apologising; IMSS also directed that the nurse be removed from the vaccination cell. The review further cites a statement shared by Mexico’s health authorities and a post from India’s Press Information Bureau, which said the video was not from India. Taken together, the review’s account links the video to the Mexican incident and contradicts the claim that it showed an incident in India. The review prints its conclusion as “FALSE.”

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Video shows how hospital staff is killing patients in India currently

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a three-clip video circulating during India’s then-current COVID-19 situation, presented as showing hospital staff killing patients. FACTLY examined the clips separately and found that they did not all depict a current incident or establish the claim as stated. For the first clip, FACTLY identified the NewsFirst Kannada logo and says it found the same footage on that channel. The clip shows a woman complaining that her father died because of hospital negligence in Karnataka. That is an allegation about a death, not evidence in the excerpt that staff killed patients as the video’s broad claim suggests. The other two clips were not from a recent incident, according to the review. FACTLY says the second clip had been shared by Bangladesh social-media users at least since May 2020, though it could not identify its exact context. The third clip was traced to an incident at a private hospital in Patiala in August 2020: two staff members reportedly beat a person with depression, and police arrested the staff involved. Thus, the review’s evidence identifies an older, specific assault in one clip and an older clip of unknown exact context in the other—not current evidence that hospital staff in India are killing patients.