COVID-19 media surveillance - 10 September 2020

This media surveillance collects articles reported through publicly available web sites.

It is created with the Europe Media Monitor (EMM).

The selection and placement of stories are determined automatically by a computer program.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains a mayor news topic, with 80 thousand articles per day on Wednesday (in 70 languages, as detected by MEDISYS).

Headlines

• US: Donald Trump has admitted he downplayed the threat of the coronavirus claiming that he did not want to create panic; unemployment claims surged due to Covid-19 with 884,000 Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week
• Brazil: new cases and deaths doubled from Tuesday to Wednesday, with 1,075 deaths and 35,816 cases reported in the last 24 hours
• Spain reported 8,866 new cases, but incidence falls in Madrid
• France reported 10,000 new cases in 24 hours, a record since the start of pandemic
• Greece: Covid-19 fears on Lesbos as thousands of refugees flee huge fires
• Belgium: an average of 502 people per day tested positive in Belgium during the past week.
• Luxembourg reported 281 new cases in past week
• UK recorded nearly 2,919 new cases amid increase in cases
• Turkey is scaling back plans to reopen schools later this month
• Mexico has signed an agreement to buy 32 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine
• India reported another record spike of 95,735 new cases in the past 24 hours as the virus spreads beyond its major cities
• Australia’s state of Victoria reported 51 new cases and seven deaths
• New Zealand reported four new cases on Thursday
• South Korea's latest outbreak has triggered a public backlash against conservative Christian churches for defying government orders
• China’s leaders held a ceremony to celebrate beating the coronavirus on Tuesday; China's CNBG, Sinovac find more countries to test coronavirus vaccines
• Japan: Tokyo lowered its COVID-19 alert to the second highest level following a decline in new infections

Twitter

The following news were found among the most mentioned/retweeted items:

• "'Play it down': Trump admits to concealing the true threat of coronavirus in new Woodward book" (cnn)
• "Sturgis motorcycle rally is now linked to more than 250,000 coronavirus cases. One study estimates the public health cost of the super-spreading event is near $12 billion. " (motherjones)
• "Church leader who called coronavirus punishment for "evil" of same-sex marriage has COVID-19" (cbsnews)
• "Social gatherings above six banned in England from 14 September" (bbc)
• "Emails show HHS official trying to muzzle Fauci" (politico)

The hashtag #trumpknew was trending due to Bob Woodward’s new book "Rage" (nytimes).

The hashtag #astrazena was trending after the temporary pause of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine had been announced.

The most mentioned English sources were CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, New York Post, Politico and Mother Jones.

El Diario, RT (Spanish Version) and La Nación, and Le Monde and Le Parisien were among the most mentioned Spanish and French sources, respectively.

Fact Check

• Fact checkers debunk claims circulating on social media that the mortality figures from the summer prove that the pandemic is over, reporting that even if mortality figures have been limited since May, the virus has been circulating more and more for several weeks (lemondelesdecodeurs).
• Fact checkers debunk claims circulating on social media, retweeted, among others, by US President Donald Trump, that a new report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that only six per cent of so-called COVID-19 deaths were caused solely by the virus with the other 94 per cent having underlying medical conditions. Fact checkers report that, according to experts, the CDC data shows 94 per cent of COVID-19 victims had at least one additional factor as well as COVID-19 contributing to their death (aapfactcheck).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that coronavirus nose swabs can damage the blood-brain barrier, reporting that T the brain has lots of layers of protection and the blood-brain barrier cannot be reached by a nose swab (factcheck.kz).
• German fact checkers debunk claims that doctors are paid to list COVID-19 as the cause of death in their patients’ death certificates, reporting that, according to their investigation, doctors do not have any incentive to do so (correctiv).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that data from the World Integrated Trade Solutions website shows that Covid-19 testing kits were being bought and sold by countries long before the pandemic, reporting that the data shows imports and exports of general testing kits which have since been classified as for COVID-19 during the pandemic (fullfact).
• Fact checkers debunk a video in which a self-identified doctor claims that COVID-19 is part of a mass extermination program aimed at depopulating more than 80 per cent of the global population (afpfactual).

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Contact

Mail to JRC-EMM-SUPPORTec [dot] europa [dot] eu (subject: COVID-19%20media%20surveillance) (JRC-EMM-SUPPORT[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)