COVID-19 media surveillance - 17 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: CDC director Redfield predicted that a vaccine won’t be widely available before mid-2021; at least 196,600 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S.
• Brazil exceeds 134,000 deaths by Covid-19 and 4.4 million cases
• Spain reports 239 new deaths, the highest figure so far during the second wave as infections continue to rise with 11,193 new cases, 31% of them in Madrid
• France: health minister Olivier Véran announced measures in Lyon and Nice and new instructions for schools
• Italian universities reopened with 50% capacity
• Belgium’s new cases and hospitalisations continue to rise – an average of 779 people per day tested positive
• The Netherlands has seen a record number of new infections in 24h for the third day in a row
• Luxembourg reported 147 new cases according to ministry of health
• UK’s cases surge by more than 3,300 as deaths rise by 21
• Canada could lose its ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic due to a worrying recent surge in cases
• Israel: Jerusalem's Great Synagogue will be closed for the first time over the Jewish New Year due to COVID-19
• India’s confirmed cases surpassed 5 million on Wednesday as India is expected to become the pandemic’s worst-hit country within weeks
• South Africa: An estimated 12 million people, nearly a fifth of the population, may have contracted coronavirus according to health minister
• Australia’s state of Victoria recorded just 28 cases in lowest daily new case tally in almost 3 months
• New Zealand reported seven new cases, all in managed isolation with no new community cases.
• South Korea: Churches have become South Korea’s coronavirus battleground
• China’s controversial emergency-use program for COVID vaccines is going global
• Japan: Tokyo reported 171 new cases on Thursday, with the daily count topping 100 for the third straight day

Twitter

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

• "Twitter suspends account of Chinese virologist who claimed coronavirus was made in a lab" (newsweek)
• "U.S. image plummets internationally as most say country has handled coronavirus badly" (pewresearch)
• "Anti-maskers in Indonesia have been forced to dig graves for coronavirus victims as punishment" (sbs)
• "Trump indoor rally site fined $3,000 for violating state coronavirus guidelines" (cnn)
• "Canada reports no new deaths from coronavirus for the first time since March" (cbsnews)
• "American woman's bar crawl spreads Covid in southern Germany. Despite symptoms for coronavirus, 26-year-old went partying while waiting for test results. Bavaria's governor called it a "model case of stupidity." (nbcnews)
• "Yelp data shows 60% of business closures due to the coronavirus pandemic are now permanent" (cnbc)
• "Stop Expecting Life to Go Back to Normal Next Year. Americans will need to take pandemic precautions well into 2021 — yes, even after a vaccine arrives" (nytimes)
• "Trump blames blue states for the coronavirus death toll — but most recent deaths have been in red states" (washingtonpost)

The most mentioned English sources were Fox News, the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN.

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

Fact Check

• Fact checkers debunk claims that a girl in a German-language video says she has been paid to pretend to be a COVID-19 patient, reporting that the translation from German is not correct (faktograf).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that the Swiss authorities officially confirmed that PCR tests used to diagnose the novel coronavirus are fake (misbar).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that the US CDC and the WHO finally admitted that the COVID-19 death count in the US is way less than was originally reported, reporting that neither the CDC nor WHO has made such a revision in the COVID-19 death tally in the US (verafiles).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that if people stopped getting tested, governments would not see the number of cases and there would not be any more lockdowns, reporting that the number of positive is one of the measures used to understand the spread of the virus, along with the number of tests carried out and things like test positivity are also used and that lack of testing might actually lead to an extended pandemic (fullfact).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that the COVID-19 vaccine will modify recipients” DNAs (afpfactual).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that international trade data showed dozens of nations bought COVID-19 testing and diagnostic materials more than two years before the start of the pandemic, explaining that while the data is authentic, it is misinterpreted (snopes).
• Fact checkers address the “New World Order” conspiracy theory, according to which, the pandemic is part of a strategy by world elites to rule the world through an authoritarian world government (uol).

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