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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.

13,677 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Photo of the prime minister of Italy crying and expressing his helplessness that he couldn’t save Coronavirus patients in Italy

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a photo said to show Italy’s prime minister crying and saying he could not save COVID-19 patients. FACTLY’s review identifies the person in that photo as Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president—not Italy’s prime minister. It reports that the image was taken at an Evangelical Thanksgiving Service, where Bolsonaro cried while remembering the knife attack he suffered during the 2018 election campaign in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. The review describes how it traced the image: after cropping and reverse-image-searching the posted photo, it found the same photo in a Poder 360 article dated December 17, 2019. FACTLY says that article identified the person as Bolsonaro and connected the image to the service. The review also says it searched for evidence that Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, had made the alleged statement, but found no such information from a trusted news agency or on Conte’s official Twitter account. These findings address the specific photo and the claim that Conte expressed helplessness; the image instead depicts Bolsonaro at a different event, and the review found no support for the alleged statement.

USA TodayHealth & medicine

The 1918 flu pandemic became known as the “Spanish flu” because wartime censors minimized reports of the illness while the Spanish press did not

Publisher’s rating: True

The claim concerns the origin of the name “Spanish flu,” not where the virus began. USA Today reports that the pandemic’s origins remain unsettled: the CDC had no universal consensus, and researchers had proposed several possible locations. The review therefore distinguishes the uncertain origin of the virus from the explanation for the name. The investigation describes how wartime governments and media handled reports of the outbreak. Public health officials in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States downplayed its spread, while John M. Barry told USA Today that the United States did not formally censor the news but that the press and government institutions engaged in “self-censorship.” The review attributes this restraint to governments’ concern about morale and panic during the war. Spain was neutral, so the wartime pressures that discouraged reporting elsewhere did not apply in the same way. Spanish officials and media reported the crisis more readily; coverage also increased after King Alfonso XIII fell gravely ill. USA Today says this greater visibility gave the false impression that the disease originated in Spain. It notes there is no evidence the virus began there or was especially worse there than elsewhere in Europe. The review concludes that the name persisted because other countries were unwilling or uninterested in reporting their own outbreaks.

NewtralHealth & medicine

El País publica un tweet donde afirma que Manuela Carmena tiene coronavirus

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The review examines a tweet claiming that former Madrid mayor Manuela Carmena had tested positive for coronavirus and says it was not published by El País. It identifies the account that circulated the message as a fake, parody account, rather than the newspaper’s account. The review also reports that Más País confirmed to Newtral that the claim was false. Thus, the evidence described concerns the provenance of the specific tweet and contradicts the attribution to El País; the excerpt does not provide further details about how the account was authenticated.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturHealth & medicine

Ein Kettenbrief zum neuartigen Coronavirus geistert seit Wochen durch die sozialen Netzwerke. Mal heißt es darin, die Ratschläge kämen von "Experten aus Taiwan" oder einem "italienischen Arzt" aus der chinesischen Stadt Shenzhen; mal sind es ein "Krankenhaus-Chefarzt & Stationsleitung", die Stadt Wien oder die UN-Kinderhilfsorganisation Unicef. Der Kettenbrief wird in mehreren Versionen in verschiedenen Sprachen geteilt. Kern des Textes ist oft die Behauptung, der Erreger Sars-CoV-2 sterbe bei 26 bis 27 Grad Celsius ab.

Publisher’s rating: Der Text enthält eklatante Falschbehauptungen. Weder stirbt das Virus bei 27 Grad ab, noch ist Luftanhalten ein Schnelltest für eine mögliche Infektion. Häufiges Trinken verhindert auch nicht, infiziert zu werden. Außerdem zählt Schnupfen ebenfalls zu den möglichen - wenn auch weniger häufigen - Symptomen von Covid-19. Der Kettenbrief ist somit keine ernstzunehmende Quelle für seriöse Informationen zum Coronavirus, zumal seine Herkunft völlig unklar ist. Der Text stammt ausdrücklich nicht vom "Magistrat Wien" und auch nicht von Unicef.

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Video of Canada PM Justin Trudeau’s wife pleading people to take COVID-19 seriously

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of a woman in a hospital bed urging people to take COVID-19 seriously. It identifies her as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. FACTLY’s review says it investigated who appears in that particular video, rather than whether Trudeau’s wife had contracted COVID-19. It reports that she had tested positive and was in isolation, but says she was not the woman filmed in the hospital. [S1] To identify the woman, the review says its investigators subjected screenshots from the video to reverse image search. That search led them to a Daily Mail article, which identified the woman as Tara Jane Langston, a waitress being treated for COVID-19 at Hillingdon Hospital in London. The review says Langston filmed the plea in the hospital’s intensive care unit. This identification directly contradicts the video’s attribution to Grégoire Trudeau. [S1] The review adds that Langston was admitted to the hospital on 15 March and later diagnosed with COVID-19, and reports that she was recovering at the time described. It also notes that the same video was being circulated under a separate false identification, as a woman named Rita Bachkaniwala and the first positive coronavirus case in Surat. The review concludes that the woman in the video was neither Trudeau’s wife nor someone from Surat. [S1]

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Photo of a vaccine developed by US scientists for COVID-19

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media photo said to show a COVID-19 vaccine developed by US scientists. The post also linked the image to a claim that Trump had announced Roche would launch a vaccine the following Sunday. FACTLY checked what the pictured item was and whether the related announcement concerned a vaccine or a test. FACTLY reports using Google Reverse Image Search to trace the same image to a journalist’s tweet, which described a South Korean COVID-19 diagnostic kit. The review then searched for the company name, Sugentech, on its website and identified the pictured product as “COVID-19 IgM/IgG,” a diagnostic kit. Those checks identify the object in the photo as a test kit, not a vaccine. The review also distinguishes the Roche announcement from the claim attached to the image: it says Trump announced FDA approval of a coronavirus test, not a vaccine. For the broader vaccine claim, it cites WHO information stating that, as of March 23, 2020, there was no COVID-19 vaccine or specific antiviral medicine to prevent or treat the disease. Taken together, the image provenance, product identification and contemporaneous WHO information contradict the post’s description of the photo as a vaccine.