DigitEye India Fact Checkers
Recently, social media is upbeat that India has found a cure to novel coronavirus. A Facebook page by name “Indian Army Fans” posted the link of a news article in newspaper Punjab Kesari along with a claim in Hindi that claimed: “India has found a cure for coronavirus; Patient recovers speedily” and the same was reported by many news outlets.
Facebook message
Similar message was shared by more than 11,000 users on Facebook, and it has gone viral at a time when the deadly coronavirus has claimed more than 2,100 lives and infected over 80,000 globally so far. In fact, scientists are still confined to their research labs to find a vaccine or an anti-viral drug to contain the fast spreading coronavirus. The news from India has stirred global attention since it talked about the cure.
Digiteye India took it up for fact-checking and found that the claim was far fetched and misleading.
FACT CHECK
The news article in Punjab Kesari published on February 11 actually talked about the recovery of a patient in Kerala and the same was published in ‘Bhartiye Samachar’. The headline was equally misleading saying that India did discover cure to coronavirus and the patient recovered thereby. See it below:
Punjab Kesari headline
As such there is no treatment for coronavirus and doctors in India, Thailand and elsewhere have focused on relieving the symptoms using more fluids to reduce dehydration, using paracetamol to reduce a fever, and keep the patients healthy to improve their immunity so antibodies are developed by the body to fight the virus. Many patients have recovered on their own.
In a case in Thailand, a Chinese woman infected with coronavirus with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV. Elsewhere, doctors combined anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, incuding India.
Conclusion
The headline of the news article is misleading as India has not officially claimed any such cure for coronavirus. Our rating of the claim is Totally False ?????.
