Gargle salt water, use herbal eyedrops: False news on how to cure coronavirus goes viral on internet
Hong Kong, Feb 06: Gargle saltwater, use herbal eyedrops, steam-clean a face mask -- false claims about how to combat the deadly coronavirus epidemic emerging out of China are flooding the internet.
Social media giants have promoted their strategies to combat misinformation related to the epidemic, which has claimed more than 560 lives in China and spread to 24 countries.
Twitter, which reported 15 million coronavirus-related tweets in January, said it had suspended auto-suggest search results that would likely produce untrustworthy content.
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Facebook also said it was targeting false claims aimed at discouraging treatment or taking appropriate precautions with the respiratory virus.
"This includes claims related to false cures or prevention methods -- like drinking bleach cures the coronavirus -- or claims that create confusion about health resources that are available," Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook's head of health, said in a statement.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also launched a campaign to discredit specific claims, such as that sesame oil and mouthwash can effectively kill the virus.
Yet the misinformation continues to pollute social media platforms and messaging apps.
Here is a selection of the false claims that AFP, which has a specialised fact-checking team, has debunked in recent days: A claim that the coronavirus can be cured overnight if sufferers drink freshly boiled garlic water was shared across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in Pakistan.
"There is no scientific evidence to substantiate the claim that garlic boiled water cures the novel coronavirus nor is there any proper medical research available on the subject," said Dr Wasim Khawaja, an expert at the Pakistani Institute of Medical Sciences, for an AFP fact-check report.
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In the Philippines, videos viewed many millions of claim the virus can be cured with an eye drop made of sap from a local shrub that is commonly used to treat fever and stomach issues.
One 11-minute video, claiming the tinospora crispa plant is an effective "antibiotic" for the virus, was viewed more than 1.5 million times on Facebook. There has been no medical evidence to back this claim.
A
video
of
a
purported
doctor
advising
people
to
steam
disposable
surgical
face
masks
to
reuse
them
was
viewed
hundreds
of
thousands
of
times
in
multiple
Chinese-language
posts
on
Facebook,
Weibo
and
Youku.
In
Hong
Kong,
the
video
was
viewed
almost
900,000
times
within
a
day
after
a
lawmaker
shared
it
on
Facebook.
The
WHO,
the
Hong
Kong
Red
Cross
and
the
Hong
Kong
Centre
for
Health
Protection
have
all
issued
warnings
against
steaming
--
or
reusing
at
all
--
single-use
masks.
In
the
days
following
Sri
Lanka's
first
confirmed
coronavirus
case,
an
article
was
shared
hundreds
of
times
on
Facebook
claiming
that
asafoetida,
a
plant
often
used
in
traditional
Indian
medicine,
can
prevent
infection.
The claim was widely refuted by health experts who urged Sri Lankans to follow official Ministry of Health recommendations.
"There is absolutely no basis to the claims that various herbs such as perumkaayam can serve as protective barriers against the spread of coronavirus," said Dr Ashan Pathirana, a registrar at Sri Lanka's state-run Health Promotion Bureau.
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A claim that a top Chinese respiratory expert advised people to rinse their mouths with salt water to prevent infection was shared widely on multiple social media platforms, including Weibo, Twitter and Facebook.
"No present findings have suggested that saline water can kill the new coronavirus," the expert, Zhong Nanshan, said as he refuted the false claim.