COVID-19 media surveillance - 30 April 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.

Headlines

• USA: Spike in US deaths and cases flagged as pneumonia suggest even greater COVID-19 impact; US economy shrank by 4.8 % in first quarter
• Spain: record number of coronavirus recoveries, but daily deaths rise to 325
• Italy’s new cases stable as economic cost mounts; Fitch Ratings downgraded the euro area’s third-largest economy to BBB-
• France: deaths rise by 427 while hospitalizations fall; authorities are considering the introduction of a series of ‘stop and go’ lockdowns; France saw its sharpest economic contraction since World War II
• Germany reports 1,478 new coronavirus cases and 173 more deaths
• UK deaths pass 26,000 as figures include care home cases
• Belgium: 525 new cases and 170 new deaths; ongoing discussion about high mortality rate in Belgium
• Luxembourg: 100 contact tracers will investigate new cases
• Iran: 6 million Iranians might lose jobs due to coronavirus pandemic as Iran reopens for business
• India: cases cross 33,000-mark
• Brazil has record number of new cases of coronavirus, deaths total 5,466; city of Manaus resorts to mass graves as deaths soar
• Singapore: migrant workers living in dormitories continue to form the bulk of new cases.
• South Korea: 4 new imported without local transmission; tests in recovered patients found false positives, not reinfections
• Japan is leaning toward extending the state of emergency for at least a month as the initial May 6 deadline approaches; Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the Tokyo Olympics could not take place next year unless the pandemic is contained.
• China: cases in Heilongjiang province are raising concerns of a second wave
• Science: results from largest trial so far show the antiviral remdesivir speeds up recovery

Twitter

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

• "UK now has second highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Europe" (skynews)
• "Jared Kushner Calls Coronavirus Response ‘a Great Success Story’ as Death Toll Nears 60,000" (dailybeast)
• "Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop" (tampabay)
• "Dr. Fauci backed controversial Wuhan lab with millions of U.S. dollars for risky coronavirus research" (newsweek)
• "Ethics review needed into Kushner shadow task force" (citizensforethics)
• "Jared Kushner’s ‘princely arrogance’ set back the coronavirus response by weeks: report" (rawstory)

The hashtags #remdesivir and #gilead were trending as results from largest trial so far show the antiviral speeds up recovery (nature).

The hashtag #kawasaki appeared due to a rare inflammatory syndrome potentially linked to COVID-19 and Kawasaki’s disease (france24).

The most mentioned English sources were the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, Newsweek, Youtube and the Daily Mail.

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

Extracted Quotes

Shinzo Abe (Japan, Prime Minister):

"We’ve been saying we will hold the Olympics and Paralympics in which athletes and spectators can participate safely and in a complete form. I think they cannot be held in a complete form if the pandemic is not contained".

Jerome Powell (US, Chair of the Federal Reserve):

"We are going to see economic data for the second quarter that is worse than any data we have seen for the economy"; "There are direct consequences of the disease and measures we are taking to protect ourselves from it."

Fact Check

Fact checked: anti-vax narratives

• Fact checkers debunk Facebook posts shared in at least three countries claiming to offer a legal way to refuse COVID-19 vaccination; the posts, among other things, advise patients to ask doctors whether a vaccine contains MRC-5, which they claim are “aborted fetal cells and other DNA” contained in all vaccines (afp).

Fact checked: downplaying the crisis

• Brazilian fact checkers debunk a photo claiming to show an empty field hospital (folha).

Fact checked: anti-ziganist and anti-Muslim content

• Spanish fact checkers debunk claims that the government is giving “solidarity cards” to Roma families affected by the coronavirus outbreak (efe).
• Fact checkers debunk a video in Arabic claiming to show "the first Chinese Muslim after the coronavirus outbreak"; the video is said to be part of a misleading set of news claiming that in the wake of the pandemic, many non-Muslims are converting to Islam (afp).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

• Fact checkers debunk claims that 5G technology caused the coronavirus outbreak (colombiacheck).
• Fact checkers debunk general claims that the novel coronavirus was created in China (radiocanada); they also debunk claims that Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tasuku Honjo said SARS-CoV-2 is not natural and originated in a Wuhan lab (afp, efe).

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