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Friend, accuracy matters
It’s your support that helps us spot the mistakes that others are willing to overlook.
Thank you for very much for your donation.
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FACT CHECK
Japan is not using ivermectin instead of vaccines to treat Covid
A website for a US radio show makes a bold (and false) claim about the pandemic: “Japan drops vax rollout, goes to Ivermectin, ENDS COVID almost overnight.” Except…
- Japan’s vaccine rollout is ongoing
- Japan has not approved ivermectin as a Covid treatment
- Covid did not end overnight
The article has been viewed over 400,000 times and has been shared widely over social media.
In reality, Japan has administered around 360,000 doses of Covid vaccine a day for the past week and this week announced plans to begin its rollout of booster jabs in December.
As for ivermectin, Japan’s equivalent of the MHRA asserts that, although clinical trials are ongoing, it is “not approved for use to treat disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
Covid case rates have certainly fallen substantially in Japan since the summer, now reporting an average of 168 cases per day. However, this does not necessarily mean that the disease has been “wiped out,” as is claimed in the article.
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FACT CHECK
What are the risks of Covid-19 in pregnancy?
In partnership with charity Pregnant Then Screwed, we’ve been asked lots of questions on WhatsApp about the risks of Covid in pregnancy.
The evidence so far shows that you are not more likely to be infected with Covid-19 during pregnancy, but pregnant women who do catch it are more likely to be admitted to intensive care.
There are also higher rates of complications to pregnancy and delivery when women require hospital treatment for Covid-19.
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FACT CHECK
Study doesn’t show tea and coffee cause lower dementia and stroke risk
A study concluded that drinking two to three cups of coffee with two to three cups of tea each day is associated with about a 30% lower risk of certain types of stroke and dementia. However, the authors clearly state that their research “cannot establish a causal relationship”.
This means that contrary to the headlines of articles in The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Express, this study does not confirm that “Keeping the cuppas coming reduces risk of stroke and dementia”, or that tea and coffee “slashes your risk of the condition by 32%”.
Professor Tara Spires-Jones, UK Dementia Research Institute programme lead, told the Science Media Center that while the research is “interesting” and “robustly conducted”, it is “not possible to know from this kind of data whether the tea and coffee drinking are the cause of reduced risk of stroke or dementia”.
She added there may be other factors in people that drink tea and coffee that are the “real influencers of disease risk”.
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MORE FACT CHECKS
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All the best,
Team Full Fact
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