With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic raging worldwide, misinformation seems to have assumed enormous proportions. Many posts on social media platforms suggest unauthentic home remedies and different medications that can help cure COVID-19.
In one such post, it is being claimed that national daily The Times of India published a news report saying that eating chikoo fruit, also known as sapota, can cure COVID-19.
The claim is being widely shared on social media platforms.
The post can be seen here, here and here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked this post and found it to be misleading.
First of all, we noticed that the masthead of The Times of India’s news report in the claim is old.
The logo and the format of the post aren’t similar to the one which is being circulated currently. The header is used in the national daily looks like this – (TOI’s copy of March 30, 2021)
We had also put the image through Reverse Image Search along with keywords– ‘Cheeku The Covid Killer’, but couldn’t find anything.
We also scanned the website of The Times Of India and other media organizations, to look for allied news reports on the same topic, however, nothing relevant came up.
Hence, this established that no such news report was published by The Times of India.
Other than this, to cross verify, we also searched for any related advisory published by WHO or Health Ministry or any other authentic health organization, however, we were unable to find anything related to this.
Moreover, during our investigation, we discovered that the WHO had clearly mentioned on their website that as of now, there are no evidence that food supplement/vitamins or fruits can cure or prevent COVID-19.
You can find more about coronavirus misinformation here.
Hence, with all the above information we can ascertain that the claim in the post is misleading. There is no scientific evidence/ authentic report available as of now to support the claim. The newspaper clipping being shared in the viral post is morphed.
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