COVID-19 media surveillance - 27 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: Twitter refutes inaccuracies in Trump’s Tweets for first time; at least 98,900 deaths in the US
• Brazil: 807 new deaths while there is underreporting and cases awaiting confirmation; Brazilian media will boycott Bolsonaro’s residence after abuse by his supporters
• UK: Excess UK deaths in Covid-19 outbreak approach 60,000
• Spain: most of the country moved to Phase 1 even though the primary healthcare services could test less than half of possible Covid-19 patients; two-week coronavirus quarantine requirement for overseas arrivals is planned to end on 1 July
• Italy records 397 new cases and 78 new deaths
• France’s coronavirus death toll rose by less than a 100 for the sixth consecutive day on Tuesday
• Germany has extended social distancing rules to 29 June
• Belgium: 198 new cases and 39 hospital admissions in Belgium
• Luxembourg: two new cases reported
• Russia: amid widespread infections, even pro-Putin media question Kremlin fatality accounting
• Egypt: the Egyptian Medical Syndicate has accused the government of negligence over lack of personal protection for doctors
• Mexico reached new record of over 500 deaths per day
• India: with a surge in cases, Mumbai was among the world’s four cities with highest numbers of cases with Moscow, Sao Paulo and New York
• New Zealand has reported a fifth consecutive day without new cases
• South Korea: two children displayed syndroms of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C); 40 new confirmed cases, 37 of which were linked to Itaewon nightclub cluster
• Japan will set up a new 117.1 trillion yen stimulus package; Tokyo aims at initiating phase two this weekend
• Vietnam has not had a single COVID-19 death to date
• China reports one new case and 28 new asymptomatic cases

Twitter

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

• "Twitter labels Trump tweets as ‘potentially misleading’ for the first time" (theverge)
• "Coronavirus 'disappearing' so fast Oxford vaccine has 'only 50% chance of working'. Professor Adrian Hill describes the efforts to create a vaccine as a "race against the virus disappearing, and against time" (sky)

• "Despite the hype, Gilead’s remdesivir will do nothing to end the coronavirus pandemic" (theintercept)

• "UK's daily death rate is now the highest in the world. More than 500 in every million people in the UK have now died from Covid-19" (theindependent)

• "A 2019 Dominic Cummings blog post was recently edited to explicitly mention a coronavirus" (fullfact)

• "Colombia’s government is using the coronavirus to weaken the historic peace agreement" (washingtonpost)

The hashtags #dominiccummings, #cummings and #booforboris keep trending due to the ongoing reporting on Dominic Cummings’ behaviour during quarantine.

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

Infobae, El Confidencial, La Nacion, RT (Spanish Version) and Okdiario, and Le Monde and Le Parisien were among the most mentioned Spanish and French sources, respectively.

Extracted Quotes

Carissa Etienne (Pan American Health Organization, Director):

"We are particularly concerned that the number of new cases reported last week in Brazil was the highest for a seven-day period, since the outbreak began. Both Peru and Chile are also reporting a high incidence"; "Now is not the time to relax restrictions or scale back preventive strategies. Now is the time to stay strong, remain vigilant and aggressively implement proven public health measures".

Fact Check

Fact checked: fear-mongering claims

• Fact checkers debunk photographs claiming to show COVID-19 victims on the street in Nicaragua, reporting that while the photos are from Nicaragua, they show people who died of other causes and a man who did not die, but fell asleep (afpfactual).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that China and Japan re-entered strict lockdowns in mid-May 2020 following a "second wave" of coronavirus (boomlive).

Fact checked: health-related claims

• Fact checkers debunk a video claiming that PCR tests cannot detect the novel coronavirus, clarifying that PCR tests can determine the presence of the virus at the time of the disease (stopfake).
• Fact checkers debunk claims that according to an Italian doctor, asymptomatic coronavirus carriers are not contagious (facta).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

• Fact checkers debunk claims that the TV show “The Dead Zone” had predicted the coronavirus outbreak (faktograf).

Fact checkers point out that Dominic Cummings’ blog was edited on 14 April 2020 to make it look like he warned people about coronavirus in 2019 (fullfact).

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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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