1. Kanika Kapoor Takes A Selfie With PM Modi After Testing COVID-19 Positive?
A selfie of singer Kanika Kapoor and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going viral with the claims that the former took the selfie after returning from London, following which she tested positive for the COVID-19 disease. This claim is false; Kapoor had tweeted this image on September 18, 2018 - long before the outbreak began in China.
Read all about the claim and the facts around the selfie here.
2. Is This Sophie Trudeau Talking About Coronavirus?
A video clip of a woman who contracted COVID-19 speaking from a hospital bed about 'not taking chances' is being shared with a false claim that identifies her as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, wife of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. The clip is being shared with the following misleading caption: "The Canadian PM's wife. For people who are still not taking it seriously." BOOM found that the woman in the video is 39-year old Tara Lane Langston, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month. She recorded the video while being treated at the Hillingdon Hospital in west London.
Read more about the video here.
3. Can Gaumutra Cure Coronavirus?
During a press conference held by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH) on March 18, a reporter brought up the claim of gaumutra, or cow urine, being a remedy for COVID-19, and asked whether the MoH and Ministry of AYUSH are at conflict on this matter. BOOM found that there is some existing literature on certain remedial properties of cow urine, and the United States have granted patents for the medical use of cow urine distillate. However, none of these studies have investigated the effectiveness of cow urine on SARS-CoV-2, which is a novel virus, and all of them predate the outbreak of the disease by years. But, the WHO still states that there is no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat the new coronavirus.
Read the facts around this claim in detail here.
4. Is The Government Spraying Medicine To Kill Coronavirus?
A viral message on WhatsApp asking people to stay indoors as the government is going to spray medicine to kill 'coronavirus' is fake. The message has been doing the rounds in Mumbai and Bangalore and asks residents to stay indoors between 10pm to 5am. BOOM got in touch with a senior officer at Mumbai's Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). He said, "This is a fake message. Nobody is spraying anything in the air or anywhere. This is someone's attempt to create panic." He added, "While it is good if people stay indoors unless absolutely necessary, such a message is false and fake."
Read the facts around this claim in detail here.
5. Sachin Tendulkar Asked For Meat Ban?
A quote calling for closure of meat shops in the wake of Coronavirus outbreak has gone viral in the name of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. The viral post, accompanied with a photo of the master blaster, reads 'Coronavirus is an epidemic that has spread because of consumption of non-vegetarian food. Why then only school, colleges and malls are shut? All shops selling meat should be closed'. The same claim is also viral without Tendulkar's name. But BOOM did not find any link of the quote to Sachin Tendulkar. Instead, the cricketer had shared several posts raising awareness about the Coronavirus outbreak.
Read more about this here.