Facts in Q&A format

The Burden of Disease Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council has been using information from the National Population Register and historical data from 2018 and 2019 to estimate the number of deaths that could be expected during 2020. They compare it with deaths registered during...

In an address about the pandemic on 29 March, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari said conditional cash transfers for the next two months would be paid to “the most vulnerable in society” immediately. But it is not possible to apply for this assistance as community leaders and groups help to det...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a funder of Africa Check’s work, having provided 11% of our income in 2019. As a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, Africa Check subscribes to a code of principles. According to the code, signatories should ensure that “funders have n...

Dr Elisa Granato, a postdoctoral researcher in the Oxford’s zoology department, received one of the first two jabs administered at the start of a Covid-19 vaccine trial at the University of Oxford. She has denied reports of her death.More: ‘I’m very much alive.’ No, first volunteer in UK Cov...

President Muhammadu Buhari announced a two-week extension of the lockdown on 13 April. At no point during the speech did he say Nigerians should appreciate him for the extension. More: Was President Buhari Smug Over the Two-Week Extension to the Lockdown? ...

Barack Obama’s office denied a claim, contained in a WhatsApp message, that the former US president had warned Africans against the use of “toxic” Covid-19 vaccines. Obama’s office said he had not made any statements about coronavirus vaccines and that he was pro-vaccination. Mo...

There is no scientific evidence that supports the claim that palm oil is a cure for Covid-19. According to the World Health Organization, “some Western, traditional or home remedies may provide comfort and alleviate the symptoms of Covid-19”, but there is “no evidence that current medicine can...

Covid-19 can infect anyone, but some people are believed to be more likely to develop severe illness. Examples include patients who are older than 60 years and those with pre-existing medical conditions that “affect the cardiovascular, respiratory and immune system”. These conditions include lun...

The authors of an academic paper, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, claim that there is a correlation between Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination and the extent to which countries are affected by Covid-19. BCG is a tuberculosis vaccine. Professor Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious ...