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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.

13,676 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Op Facebook wordt gesteld dat steeds meer mensen hun huisdier naar het dierenasiel brengen omdat zij bang zijn voor besmetting met het nieuwe coronavirus dat COVID-19 veroorzaakt. Begin april 2020 had in de Telegraaf een verhaal gestaan over besmette katten en honden in China en België. (http://archive.vn/34tSw)

Publisher’s rating: Het bericht is fout. Er worden in deze quarantainetijd juist meer eenzame dieren geadopteerd; de dierenasielen krijgen amper nieuwe huisdieren binnen. Het veronderstelde besmettingsgevaar is vrijwel nihil.

The review addresses the specific Facebook claim that people were increasingly taking pets to shelters because they feared infection with the coronavirus, against the background of a Telegraaf story about infected cats and dogs in China and Belgium. It says that the alleged surge in shelter arrivals was not occurring: the Dutch animal-protection organization told the fact-checkers that shelters were receiving hardly any new animals, while more abandoned pets were being adopted during quarantine. The review also examines the fear underlying the claim. It quotes the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment as saying that a few pets worldwide had been infected, in cases where their owners had tested positive, and that the chance of a pet infecting another animal or a person was negligible compared with human-to-human transmission. The animal-protection organization likewise characterized the risk from pets as marginal. Its spokesperson said reports described three or four infected pets worldwide and that there were no known cases of cats or dogs infecting people. Thus, the cited pet infections did not establish the claimed shelter trend or indicate substantial risk of transmission from pets to people.

Pagella PoliticaHealth & medicine

«[Immuni] serve a permettere a un cittadino di avere una segnalazione nel caso in cui stia per entrare a contatto con un positivo» (min. 0:19)

Publisher’s rating: Pinocchio andante

The claim concerns Luigi Di Maio’s description of Immuni during a 22 April interview with Sky Tg24. He said the app would alert a citizen if they were about to come into contact with someone who tested positive. The original review examined how the app was intended to work and compared that account with the explanation attributed to the Health Ministry and the government’s selection announcement. The review describes Immuni as a voluntary, Bluetooth-based app that would record nearby app users’ devices, their distance and the duration of contact. It says that when an app user tested positive, an authorized medical operator could send an alert to users who had been in contact with that person. Thus, the alert concerned a contact that had already occurred, not a predicted future encounter. The review concludes that Di Maio was wrong about this timing: the app traced contacts retrospectively, using past data, rather than forecasting who a person might meet. The distinction is central to the claim. The review does not say Immuni could prevent a person from encountering someone positive or warn them before such an encounter. It says the app could notify a user after they had been in contact with someone who later tested positive, potentially before that user developed symptoms.

Vera FilesHealth & medicine

Hantavirus is a new virus from rats discovered in China

Publisher’s rating: False Headline

Research from related reporting contradicts the claim that hantavirus was a new virus discovered in China. One report states that the virus was first identified in South Korea in 1978, when researchers traced it to a field mouse. That account places its identification decades before the claim’s 2020 setting and in a different country. The same report says hantavirus cases occur annually, with most cases coming from China. That distinction matters: reporting that China accounts for many cases does not establish that the virus originated there or was first discovered there. The supplied excerpts do not describe the original fact-check’s investigation or provide its underlying evidence, so this explanation is limited to the later related reporting.

USA TodayHealth & medicine

Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators

Publisher’s rating: True

The review examined statements by Minnesota physician and state senator Scott Jensen, who said hospitals receive more for Medicare patients classified as having COVID-19 and substantially more when those patients need ventilators. Jensen gave figures of $5,000 for ordinary pneumonia, $13,000 for COVID-19 pneumonia, and $39,000 for COVID-19 pneumonia requiring ventilation. The article reports that he raised the issue in a Fox News interview on April 8 and a Facebook video on April 19, while clarifying that he did not explicitly accuse hospitals of fraud. To assess the payment claim, USA TODAY describes how Medicare hospital payments are calculated: hospitals have location-sensitive base rates, and payments also depend on diagnosis-related groups and the resources associated with treating a patient. The review compared Jensen’s figures with reporting and analyses by other organizations. It says PolitiFact found his cited amounts roughly matched a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, and that Ask FactCheck found them generally consistent with estimated payments for comparable diagnoses. The article also cites the CARES Act’s 20% Medicare add-on for COVID-19 patients. The review distinguishes the payment rules from the separate suggestion that hospitals might inflate case numbers to obtain more money. It reports that presumed COVID-19 cases could qualify under CDC guidance, even without laboratory confirmation, and that Jensen was concerned this created an avenue for higher payments. But it says there were no public reports of hospitals exaggerating COVID-19 numbers to receive more, and quotes Ask FactCheck’s conclusion that there was no evidence of fraudulent reporting. Thus, the evidence described supports higher payments under specified circumstances, not an established practice of fraudulent classification.