FALSE: Daytime nudity does not cure COVID-19
A Facebook post claiming daytime nudity can heal COVID-19 is FALSE.
The post, written in both English and Luganda, claims nudity can “heal the China Virus COVID”.
“Whoever made nudity immoral was trying to hide a lot of truths about humanity. Did you know that day time nudity can heal the China Virus COVID? Will you say I have not wished you well?” the post reads.
However, the World Health Organization (WHO) says COVID-19 has no known cure, but can be prevented by frequent hand washing with soap or a 60 percent alcohol-based sanitisers, and through vaccination which reduces the severity of the disease among other measures.
COVID-19, a viral disease caused by a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, was first discovered in December 2019, in Wuhan, China.
The disease has since progressed to a pandemic, infecting and killing millions of people around the world.
So far, over 179 million cases and 3.8 million deaths have been reported globally. Uganda, which experienced a surge in June 2021, has recorded 75,537 cases and 781 deaths.
Currently, the WHO is coordinating efforts to develop and evaluate medicines to treat the viral disease.
These include a number of clinical trials across the world such as the UK’s Recovery trial which is the world’s largest clinical trial involving more than 12,000 participants, WHO’s Solidarity trial to assess promising treatments in countries around the world and the University of Oxford’s Principle trial looking for medicines which could help people recover from COVID-19 symptoms.
The claim that daytime nudity can heal COVID-19 is, therefore, untrue.
PesaCheck has looked into a post claiming daytime nudity can cure COVID-19 and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Leah Kahunde Ndung’u and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.