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.

13,674 published reviews in this topic

Vishvas NewsHealth & medicine

‘सेंधा नमक के साथ कच्ची प्याज (लाल डार्क वाली) छीलकर खाने से 15 मिनिट बाद लोग पॉजिटिव से निगेटिव हो रहे हैं ये एकदम सत्य है आप खुद करके देखे… कोरोना हो या ना हो कच्ची प्याज सेंधा नमक लगा कर रोज खाते रहें वायरस गले में ही मर जायेगा… आपको लाभ हो तो सबको शेयर जरूर करें।

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claims that eating peeled raw red onion with rock salt can make people with COVID-19 test negative within 15 minutes and that eating it regularly kills the virus in the throat. Vishvas News reports that it investigated this precise claim and concluded that eating onion and salt cannot cure coronavirus infection in that time. The review identifies the Facebook user Hakim Pujara as the person who shared the post.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Consuming raw unions with rock salt can cure the Covid-19 virus

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media post saying raw onions eaten with rock salt could cure COVID-19; it also asserted that a person consuming the mixture would test negative within 15 minutes. FACTLY says it examined whether there was evidence for the proposed home remedy, rather than reporting a clinical test of the mixture or a specific patient’s recovery. The review’s conclusion was that evidence did not support the claimed cure. To check the claim, FACTLY reports looking for information about the remedy and finding news coverage of the circulating message. It also cites a Press Information Bureau statement and a MyGov Corona Hub post. The review says the PIB stated there was no scientific evidence that onions with rock salt could cure COVID-19, and that MyGov described the remedy as a myth. The review further reports that the World Health Organization had not approved the remedy and that it was not mentioned in the WHO website’s “Healthy Diet” section. Taken together, the cited government communications, WHO information and absence of scientific evidence described in the review do not substantiate either a cure or the claimed 15-minute test result.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Photos representing the current need for oxygen cylinders among Indian COVID-19 patients

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post linked two photographs to the need for oxygen among Indian COVID-19 patients, showing people carrying cylinders on roads. FACTLY’s investigation found that neither photograph depicted the claimed situation in India: one showed an older incident in Uttar Pradesh, and the other showed a person in Bangladesh. The review concludes that the photos were unrelated to the current Indian COVID-19 crisis. [S1: “These photos show patients carrying oxygen cylinders along with them on roads.”; “The first photo in the post shows an old incident in Uttar Pradesh.”; “The other photo shared in the post is related to Barishal city in Bangladesh.”] For the first image, the review says a reverse-image search found a similar visual in an ANI video published on 07 April 2018. ANI described an old woman waiting outside Agra Medical College hospital for an ambulance; other articles about the incident also placed it in April 2018 and described the woman and her son waiting outside the emergency ward. This establishes that the image predated the COVID-19 crisis discussed in the post. [S1: “a similar visual was found in a video published by ‘ANI’ news website on 07 April 2018.”; “ANI’ reported it as the visuals of an old woman waiting outside the Agra Medical College hospital for an ambulance service.”; “These articles also reported it as visuals of a helpless old woman and her son waiting outside the Agra Media College emergency ward for an ambulance service.”] For the second image, the review reports finding a similar photograph in a Daily Star article about Barishal resident Ziaul Hasan carrying an oxygen cylinder while taking his mother, Rehana Begum, to Sher-e-Bangla Medical College hospital. The review distinguishes this Bangladesh image from the genuine oxygen shortage in India: it notes that Indian hospitals were running short of oxygen, but says that broader crisis did not make these two photos evidence of it. [S1: “This photo shows a Bangladesh citizen carrying an oxygen cylinder on his back with his mother, taking her to the hospital in Barishal.”; “This photo was captured while Ziaul Hasan was taking his mother Rehana Begum to Sher-e-Bangla Medical college hospital in Barishal.”; “In the wake of a massive surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals in India were running short of oxygen cylinders.”]

dpaHealth & medicine

RTL Z-reporter beticht RIVM van leugens.

Publisher’s rating: Beurscommentator Hans de Geus "verklapt" niet dat het RIVM liegt. Wél hekelt hij de formulering van de titels en koppen die het RIVM boven zijn persberichten en communicatie plaatst, omdat die de beurstransacties onnodig beïnvloeden. Het bericht op sociale media interpreteert de uitspraak van De Geus doelbewust verkeerd, dpa beoordeelt het daarom als onwaar.

The claim concerns a clip from an RTL Z broadcast on 30 March 2021 in which market commentator Hans de Geus discussed the RIVM’s reporting. The fact-check says social-media posts presented his remarks as revealing that the institute lies. It identifies the discussion as part of his report on the Dutch stock market, where he criticized the wording of RIVM headlines because of their effect on market reactions. (The source describes the clip as one “uit een RTZ Z-uitzending van 30 maart 2021” and says, “In de nieuwsuitzending van RTL Z op 30 maart 2021 deed beurscommentator Hans De Geus verslag van de Nederlandse beurs.”)

dpa-factcheckingHealth & medicine

Die gewünschte Inzidenz kann herbeigetestet werden; Dreiviertel der Corona-Toten lebten zuvor in Pflegeheimen; Corona-Impfungen sind großangelegte Menschenversuche.

Publisher’s rating: Inzidenzen steigen nicht automatisch, wenn mehr getestet wird - ein wichtiger Indikator ist dafür die Positivrate der Tests. Die Zahlen zu den Pflegeheimbewohnern stammen aus einem veralteten Zeitungsartikel. Impfstoffe gegen das Coronavirus werden vor ihrer Zulassung ausführlich getestet.

The review examines claims made by comedian Nikolai Binner in a Facebook video: that more testing automatically raises the incidence figure, that up to three quarters of coronavirus deaths were among care-home residents, and that vaccination amounted to an inadequately tested mass experiment. It compares the testing and positive-test figures cited in the review, checks the care-home claim against the January figures the video relied on, and reports what the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI) said about vaccine trials before authorisation. The review says Germany’s test volume remained at a high level while the proportion of positive tests rose. It contrasts 1.1 million tests and about 82,000 positives in the first week of February 2021 with 1.15 million tests and nearly 139,000 positives in the second week of April. In the review’s account, tests rose by just under 5 percent while positive results rose by 68 percent; it also describes the positive rate as rising over the period from 8 February to 11 April. This evidence does not support the video’s assertion that incidence necessarily rises just because more tests are performed. For the care-home claim, the review traces Binner’s figure to a newspaper article covering January, not all coronavirus deaths over time or every state equally. It reports that the article gave much lower shares for Baden-Württemberg and Hamburg than the highest shares, which were in Berlin and Hesse. On vaccination, the review cites PEI figures for trial participants and vaccine recipients before authorisation, while distinguishing those authorised vaccines from a separate vaccine developed by Winfried Stöcker, for which the review says the cited clinical-trial data were not available. Thus, the video’s broad claim about vaccines does not describe the review’s account of the pre-authorisation evidence for the vaccines approved in Europe.