COVID-19 media surveillance - 26 May 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: nearly 100,000 Americans died from COVID-19; meatpacking plants reopen while data about worker illness remains elusive
• Brazil has registered 374,898 cases and 23,473 deaths surpassing the US in number of daily deaths for second day
• UK: Minister Douglas Ross quits over Dominic Cummings’ lockdown actions; nursing home on isle of Skye with more than a quarter of its residents dead and nearly all infected; non-essential retail shops to reopen in England from 15 June
• Spain will lift two-week coronavirus quarantine for overseas arrivals from 1 July
• Italy reports lowest number of new coronavirus cases since February with 300 new cases on Monday
• France: President Macron to unveil today post-crisis plans for car industry
• Germany continues to ease coronavirus restrictions as 289 new cases were reported
• Belgium reported 250 new cases and 27 hospital admissions; cafés could reopen on 8 June or earlier
• Luxembourg: restaurants and cafés to open on Friday as only one new case was reported on Monday
• Russia reports record one-day rise in deaths with 8,915 new cases and 174 deaths
• India now ranks fourth globally on daily increase in cases with 7,000 new cases on Monday
• Mexico City records thousands more deaths than usual, amid doubt over official death toll
• Singapore’s economy could shrink by as much as 7% this year, which would be the worst reading since independence
• Egypt announced a nationwide curfew from 5 pm instead of the previous 9 pm from Sunday until Friday as 702 new cases were reported on Monday
• South Korea: cases linked to nightclub area Itaewon continued to increase on Monday with a total of 247 cases
• Japan: state of emergency was lifted Monday night in all remaining prefectures with Tokyo aiming to initiate phase two by this weekend
• China reports seven new mainland cases vs 11 a day earlier; Wuhan performed 6.5 million coronavirus tests in just 9 days according to state media

Twitter

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

• "González Laya asks the EU for common rules for opening borders" (elpais)
• "Vox falls in all the polls despite making noise in the street, the institutions and the courts" (eldiario)
• "Derry man jailed after driving 280 miles to Kerry to buy puppies" (belfasttelegraph)
• "All non-essential retail shops can reopen in England from 15 June, Johnson says" (sky)
• "UK hospital closes A&E and no longer accepting new patients" (independent)
• "NHS doctor threatens to resign if Dominic Cummings does not" (sky)
• "Trump tweets and golfs, but makes no mention of virus’s toll" (nytimes)
• "A man coughed on a Wegmans employee. Now he’s charged with a felony." (nytimes)
• "Migrant on Shramik Express dies hungry" (telegraphindia)

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

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

Extracted Quotes

Michael Ryan (WHO, Executive Director):

"Right now, we’re not in the second wave. We’re right in the middle of the first wave globally"; "We’re still very much in a phase where the disease is actually on the way up".

Arancha González Laya (Spain, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation):

"We want to make sure that people come from safe countries, but also that there is a European definition of what a safe country is. We want common controls and rules".

Fact Check

Fact checked: health claims

• Fact checkers debunk claims that inhaling steam with turmeric, epper, lemon, ginger and basil will kill the virus (vishvasnews).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that asymptomatic coronavirus carriers are not contagious (open).

Fact checked: anti-vax claims

• Fact checkers debunk a YouTube video in which an alleged doctor claims that the COVID-19 vaccine will alter the human genetic code (stopfake).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

• Fact checkers debunk claims that COVID-19 is part of a plan concocted by the world elites to vaccinate and control the world population and that Italian doctors performed autopsies of COVID-19 victims, disobeying the WHO, and found that a bacterium, treatable with antibiotics - and not a virus - caused their deaths (indiatoday).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that COVID-19 is part of a plan to vaccinate and control the world population through artificial intelligence, with COVID allegedly standing for “certificate of vaccination identification” and 19 indicating respectively the first and the ninth letters of the alphabet: AI (facta).

• Fact checkers debunk social media posts claiming that The Washington Post has reported that patient zero was a worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (observador).

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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)

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