FALSE: DO NOT SHARE

Claim:

COVID-19 has not been proven to exist.

Answer:

False. It was first identified as a novel coronavirus in January 2020.

FURTHER INFORMATION

A tweet claims that COVID-19 is not proven to exist, that death certificates have been falsified (it doesn’t say by whom), that there is weak evidence that masks help and that ‘RT-PCR’ is not proven to detect Covid-19.

This is false. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that ‘Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus’, and first reported that Chinese authorities had determined that the outbreak was caused by a novel coronavirus in January 2020.

There is no evidence that national authorities have falsified death certificates in way of COVID-19. The WHO and national health authorities have regularly provided updates on the threat that COVID-19 poses.

The WHO states that the wearing of masks can help with COVID-19 in indoor spaces.

The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test is a real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT -PCR) test used to detect the presence of antibodies.

SOURCES

World Health Organization (WHO) – Coronavirus (Overview)

World Health Organization (WHO) – Timeline of WHO’s response to COVID-19

World Health Organization (WHO) – WHO Statement regarding cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China (9 January 2020)

Origins of Claim

FULL TEXT OF CLAIM

“Falsified death certificates – FACT
Covid never proven to exist – FACT
RT-PCR cannot detect covid – FACT
Weak evidence masks help – FACT
More flu deaths 2 years ago – FACT
Thousands dead from LD – FACT

Are we really going to accept this?”

False: DO NOT SHARE