A message stating that COVID-9 is not a virus but bacteria and can be cured within a day, attributing it to research conducted in Italy is going viral on social media. Further, the message states that the bacterial infection can be cured just by aspirin. To make it believable, the message also claims that Italy found these results after it flouted the World Health Organization (WHO) and conducted an autopsy on those who died due to the coronavirus.
The claim is false, and according to WHO, COVID-19 is caused by coronaviridae, a virus. It warned that antibiotics do not work against the virus. Reacting to the claim of the condition being caused by bacteria, the organization said some infected with coronavirus can also develop a bacterial infection as a complication. Antibiotics may be recommended by a health care provider in such cases.
WHO clarified that there is no licensed medication to cure COVID-19. So, COVID-19 is caused by virus and it is not a bacteria.
Another claim made by messages making rounds in social media state that COVID-19 complications are caused by blood clotting. Dr Mike Hansen, MD, a pulmonologist, in a video referring to a study conducted in the Netherlands titled, "Incidence of Thrombotic Complications in Critically Ill ICU Patients With COVID-19", said most doctors were not looking for blood clots during initial treatment of COVID-19 patients. Autopsies showed that there were blood clots in the lungs along with inflammation. The study said that at least 31 percent of patients being treated in the ICU for COVID-19 had blood clotting.
Blood Clotting Causing Complications
Reports claim that chances of COVID-19 patients dying due to thrombosis [blood clotting] are less than 20 percent. WHO in its paper "Clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) when COVID-19 disease is suspected," stated that low-molecular-weight heparin [blood thinner] is used in the clinical management of patients suspected to be COVID-19 positive to prevent complications related to venous thromboembolism. Thromboembolism is obstruction of a blood vessel by a blood clot that has become dislodged from another site in the blood circulation.
Conspiracy Theories
These claims along with the ones stating there is no need to put COVID-19 patients on ventilator point their fingers at the conspiracy theory that blames WHO for misleading the world about coronavirus treatment. According to the theory, WHO aims at controlling the population of the world by letting people die without proper treatment.
These are just conspiracy theories without any basis or backing by a study. The fact is that COVID-19 is caused by a virus and so far there has been no licensed medicine to cure the disease.
