COVID-19 media surveillance - 6 May 2021

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

• India reported over 50% of world's new cases in a day with more than 412 thousand cases on Thursday as infections spread to rural India
• Nepal's cases skyrocket, prompting concern the country's outbreak could mimic India's
• US backs waiving patents on COVID vaccines
• UK: New concerns as Indian Covid variant clusters found across England; seven cases of Indian variant found in Northern Ireland
• EU wants to mass produce three ‘course-changing’ Covid drugs from Oct
• Poland detects first cases of Brazilian Covid variant
• France to open up Covid vaccines to all those over-50 from Monday
• Germany to offer AstraZeneca shots to all adults
• Italy: Procida becomes Italy’s first fully Covid-vaccinated island
• Belgium: total number of cases in Belgium exceeds one million
• Israeli data show that Pfizer vaccine is 96.7% effective at preventing COVID deaths
• Australia: Mystery Australian COVID case spurs return of masks, travel bans
• New Zealand suspends quarantine-free travel from New South Wales over two Sydney COVID cases
• Philippines rejects Chinese donation of Sinopharm vaccines after President receives unapproved dose
• China: The WHO is reviewing two of China’s COVID-19 vaccines for use worldwide, with a decision expected soon.
• Japan: Tokyo governor says mutant strains of COVID-19 becoming dominant; Pfizer to vaccinate Olympic athletes

Twitter

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

• "Coronavirus has crushed India’s health system. Patients are on their own." (washingtonpost)
• "Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is highly effective against variants, studies find. Two studies showed the vaccine to be more than 95 percent effective at protecting against severe disease or death from the variants first identified in South Africa and the U.K." (nytimes)
• "Children now account for 22% of new U.S. COVID cases. Why is that?" (npr)
• "The novel coronavirus’ spike protein plays additional key role in illness. Salk researchers and collaborators show how the protein damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease" (salk)
• "Limiting the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by air, a crucial issue of re-opening" (lemonde)
• "Republicans promote pandemic relief they voted against" (apnews)

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

Eldestapeweb, La Nación, El País, and Clarin, and Francetvinfo, RTL and Le Soir were among the most mentioned Spanish and French sources, respectively.

Misinformation

373 articles from unverified sources were selected forming 7 supernarratives over the last week:

The treemap shows the narratives and subnarratives associated with anti-vax articles. The colours represent the narratives, while the text indicates each subnarrative. The bigger the size of the box, the higher the number of articles tagged as that narrative and subnarrative.

Fact Check

• French fact checkers address claims that 25 per cent of vaccine-related side effects are serious, clarifying that while the figure corresponds to the reports received by France's pharmacovigilance centres, these centers ask that only serious cases be notified to them (liberation).
• Fact checkers address claims that the death rate among vaccinated people is significantly higher than in the unvaccinated population, claiming that any comparison between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is heavily skewed by the fact that the vaccinated group at present has a much higher proportion of older adults who are most at risk (usatoday).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that vaccinated people pose a health risk to those who have not been immunised by “shedding” spike proteins (afp).

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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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