As coronavirus cases rise in the country, the upsurge has become a cause of concern for the authorities. At the same time, misinformation regarding the vaccines is spreading rapidly on social media platforms.
In one such post, a video of an unrecognised doctor making various unverified claims about coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines has gone viral on social media.
The video can be seen here, here and here.
Fact Check
NewsMobile fact checked this post and found it to be false and misleading. In the video, the doctor was seen making a series of claims.
First, he says, ‘Coronavirus is not an epidemic, but a normal flu and an international conspiracy’.
Every informed citizen is aware that coronavirus, which was first discovered in 2019 in China, has spread across the world and has claimed lakhs of lives till now.
As per the recent Johns Hopkins University tracker, around 130,882,260 people have contracted the virus till now and approximately 2,848,207 people have succumbed to it so far.
The World Health Organization declared coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (last year) and the world is still largely battered by it.
In his second claim, he says that the test being done to detect coronavirus is faulty and is a scam. We investigated this claim and found that the tests being done by the Centre to detect coronavirus (RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen Test) are verified by the Ministry of Health and Indian Council Of Medical Research.
Moreover, we also found this news article published by DNA which explained, that “RT-PCR test is a test in which, a small amount of DNA is taken through a swab from the test candidate, which is then used to amplify specific sequences of the genetic material and diagnose if there is an infection. The swab can either be nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal, which means it can be sampled from both the nose and the throat. This sample is then sent for the RT-PCR test, which includes many steps to convert the RNA into viral DNA. This test is specific to check for COVID-19 infection alone. If a person tests positive, it means that they have COVID-19.”
In his third claim, the doctor in the video says that the coronavirus vaccine contains cells from animal sources (cow and pig) and the same has been said by Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla.
During our investigation we found the fact sheet shared by Serum Institute of India, which mentions the ingredients of the vaccine. The list of the ingredients do not mention the use of pig fat or cow cells.
The vaccine produced by Bharat Biotech, Covaxin, has also released its ingredients and it does not mention the use of pig fat or cow cells in them.
We also could not find any such statement made by Adar Poonawalla on any news platform which corroborates the claim.
You can find more about coronavirus misinformation here.
Hence with the above information it is clear that all claims in the above video are false and misleading.
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