COVID-19 media surveillance - 3 July 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: Confirmed cases are rising in 40 states with Arizona, California, Florida and Texas reporting a combined 25,000 new confirmed cases
• Brazil registered 1,038 deaths in the past 24 hours as the pandemic worsens in country with second-highest fatalities.
• UK lifts quarantine measures for lower risk countries
• Spain: Severity of cases in Spain falls as infections spread through younger people
• Ireland: Nearly 20% of new cases in Ireland are travel-related
• Sweden's prime minister orders an inquiry into the failure of the country's no-lockdown coronavirus strategy
• Belgium: as of July 10, travelers from Belgium will longer be quarantined upon arrival in England
• Luxembourg: Coronavirus continues to spread with 50 new cases
• Serbia: Belgrade declares state of emergency over rising cases
• South Africa: Cases of coronavirus are surging in South Africa, a month after the country lifted most of the restrictions brought in with one of the world’s strictest lockdowns
• Philippines reports largest single-day increase of cases
• India reported 22,000 new cases in biggest surge
• South Korea: Daegu has been hit by another infection cluster, while the greater Seoul area, Daejeon and Gwangju have continued to report consistent increases in the number of patients
• Japan: Tokyo reports 124 cases Friday with 70% of patients in their 20s and 30s
• China reports two new cases in Beijing and three imported cases on Thursday

Twitter

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

• "McConnell admits he was wrong to say Obama administration didn't leave pandemic response plan" (theindependent)
• Young people are throwing coronavirus parties with a payout when one gets infected, official says" (cnn)
• "Coronavirus at ‘critical juncture’ as hospitalizations in California soar" (latimes)
• "Florida records over 10K COVID-19 cases, highest single-day increase" (thehill)
• "Over 20,000 Coronavirus Cases In India In 24 Hours For First Time" (ndtv)

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

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

Extracted Quotes

Anthony Fauci (USA, NIAID Director):
"The data is showing there’s a single mutation that makes the virus be able to replicate better and maybe have high viral loads"; "We don’t have a connection to whether an individual does worse with this or not; it just seems that the virus replicates better and may be more transmissible."

Fact Check

Fact checked: health-related claims

• Fact checkers debunk claims that non-surgical masks are useless in preventing a coronavirus infection, reporting that face masks block droplets the wearer breathes out and thus protect others from catching an infection from coronavirus-carriers (faktograf).

Fact checked: anti-vax claims

• Spanish fact checkers debunk claims that COVID-19 is mainly spread by contaminated flu vaccines, which contains portions of other viruses such as HIV and herpes. Fact checkers pointed out the genetic differences between the flu and the novel coronavirus and pointed to EU quality controls to reaffirm the safety of vaccines (efeverifica).
• American fact checkers debunk a meme quoting Dr Anthony Fauci as saying “even though hundreds of doctors” have cured people with the drug hydroxychloroquine, it still needs to be studied some more and “as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine is manufactured, it must be delivered to healthcare professionals for immediate human injection. Proper studies can be done later.”, reporting that the US government’s top infectious disease official never made such statements (factcheck.org).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that a Big Pharma “whistleblower” has warned that 97% of those who will get the COVID-19 vaccine will me made infertile (faktograf).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

Fact checkers debunk claims that the FBI arrested a professor at Boston University who had ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that China is now close to being exposed for creating the coronavirus, reporting that the professor’s arrest was unrelated to the coronavirus (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)

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