Authors
Shaminder started off his career as a freelance journalist for a consulting and research firm. He has been a Political Strategist and Media Manager. Before joining Newschecker, he worked with various reputed media agencies like Daily Post India, PTC News.
Claim:
Drinking lots of water and gargling with warm water and salt or vinegar eliminates the novel corona virus. Spread the information as you can save someone with this information.
Verification:
The dreaded Coronavirus has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the spread of the disease has increased. Inspite of factual information being disseminated by WHO and various government organizations, fear inducing messages and graphics are doing the rounds on various social media platforms.
A Whatsapp forward is doing the rounds on social media claiming that drinking a lot of water and gargling with warm water and salt or vinegar eliminates the virus.
The message reads, “Corona virus before it reaches the lungs remains in the throat for four days and at this time the person begins to cough and have throat pains. If he drinks water a lot and gargling with warm water & salt or vinegar eliminates the virus. Spread this information because you can save someone with this information.”
Newschecker received the same viral message on its WhatsApp helpline number from a user asking us to verify the claim.
Fact Check:
As we began our fact check, we checked the World Health Organization (WHO) official website. The World Health Organization rubbished the viral claim in its COVID-19 myth buster’s page.
What WHO says?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO),”regularly rinsing your nose with saline does not help prevent infection. There is some limited evidence that regularly rinsing nose with saline can help people recover more quickly from the common cold. However, regularly rinsing the nose has not been shown to prevent respiratory infections,”
We continued fact checking the claim and with the help of relevant keywords, we found an article published by ‘GMA News’. According to the report, saline gargles or gargling with water and salt will provide no protection against or cure for the 2019 novel coronavirus acute respiratory disease (2019-nCoV ARD).
The report also carried a statement by the Dr. Eric Domingo , Philippine Undersecretary for health. In a press conference, Eric Domingo said “I think this is a home remedy that has been followed for many, many generations and I don’t think there’s going to be any harm in doing it. Saline gargle has always been advocated to improve mostly symptoms of sore throat…I don’t think there is any evidence that it will kill a virus,” Domingo said.
Conclusion:
Newschecker team fact-checked the claim and found that the graphic viral on Social Media claiming that gargling saline water eliminates the coronavirus is false.
Sources
- Media Reports
- Google Search
Result: Misleading
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Authors
Shaminder started off his career as a freelance journalist for a consulting and research firm. He has been a Political Strategist and Media Manager. Before joining Newschecker, he worked with various reputed media agencies like Daily Post India, PTC News.
