DigitEye India Fact Checkers
A viral message similar to the one debunked widely on Italy conducting an autopsy on a Covid victim and finding thrombosis as the main reason for covid deaths has again started making rounds with the same claim but attributed to Singapore this time.
The viral message on WhatsApp claimed that Singapore conducted an autopsy on a COVID-19 patient to find the actual cause of his death and found that it was a case of thrombosis or blood clotting.
Digiteye India received the message below on its WhatsApp for fact-checking:
FACT CHECK
To begin with, we checked the Singapore government website for health and Covid advisory but found no such report as claimed in the social media message. Further search revealed that the Ministry of Health, Singapore has clearly denied the report in its Facebook message. It said, “Singapore has not performed such an autopsy. The message states false information concerning
the pathophysiology of Covid-19 infection, which is not borne out by current evidence.”
Secondly, the message claims that SARS-CoV-2 is a bacterium instead of a virus. Anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics can cure Covid. A study in Lancet on COVID-19 deaths has stated that respiratory failure is the main cause of COVID-19 deaths. Many patients showed the symptoms of thrombosis or multiple clots disrupting blood flow.
Thirdly, The message also claimed that Singapore has broken WHO’s COVID advisory not to conduct autopsy on Covid dead patients. Similar claim made earlier for Italy was debunked by us here. WHO did not provide any protocol as claimed in the message. Instead, the global health body and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued guidelines for conducting an autopsy on people who died of Covid.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised avoiding performing autopsies because medical evidence suggests that if a person died during the infection stage of COVID-19, the lungs and other organs might still contain the live virus. In a WHO guidance titled, ‘Infection Prevention and Control for the safe management of a dead body in the context of COVID-19’, It mentions that “If a body with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 is selected for autopsy, health care facilities must ensure that safety measures are in place to protect those performing the autopsy.”
In India too, the first autopsy of a Covid victim was done at the Oxford Medical College Hospital in Bengaluru in October 2020. Several autopsies of Covid fatalities have also been done in several other countries, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy and Russia. Antibiotics are given to Covid patients to resist secondary bacterial infections that can coexist with coronavirus and often turns fatal. For such patients, antibiotics are used but they are not effective against the virus itself.
Claim: Singapore conducted an autopsy on a COVID-19 patient and found that it was case a of thrombosis that led to many deaths. Covid infection is a bacterial infection and not from virus.
Conclusion: It was proved wrong several times and WHO advisory is to be cautious and that Singapore has denied conducting any such autopsy as claimed. Our rating of the claim is Totally False.
