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On December 29, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that often spreads conspiracy theories, published an article falsely implying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had withdrawn authorization from all PCR tests to detect Covid-19. The article garnered 22,000 likes, comments and shares on Facebook and Twitter.

On TikTok and Instagram, videos of at-home Covid-19 tests showing positive results after immersion in drinking water and juice have gone viral in recent weeks and have been used to push the false narrative that coronavirus rapid tests don’t work. Health experts say some household fluids can cause a test to show a positive result, but tests remain accurate when used as directed. A TikTok video showing a home test that came back positive after being placed under running water has been shared at least 140,000 times.

And on YouTube, a video titled “Rapid antigen tests debunked” was posted by Canadian far-right website Rebel News on January 1. It generated over 40,000 views and the comments section was a hotbed of misinformation. “The direct purpose of this test is to keep the number of cases as high as possible to maintain the fear and incentive for further restraint,” said one comment, which received over 200 likes. “And of course Profit.”

Researchers say misinformation about Covid-19 tests has increased on social media in recent weeks, with coronavirus cases rising again worldwide due to the highly contagious Omicron variant.

The explosion of misinformation threatens to further hamper public efforts to contain the health crisis. Previous spikes lies about the pandemic, focusing on vaccines, masks, and the severity of the virus. Noting that lies are helping to undermine best practices for controlling the spread of the coronavirus, health experts said. misinformation remains a major factor in vaccine instability.

Categories include lies that PCR tests don’t work; that the numbers of flu and Covid-19 cases were combined; that PCR tests are vaccines in disguise; and that rapid tests at home have a predetermined result or are unreliable as different fluids can turn them positive.

According to Zignal Labs, which monitors mentions on social media, cable television, and in print and online, these themes have jumped to thousands of mentions in the last three months of 2021, compared to just a few dozen in the same time frame in 2020.

Researcher Kolina Koltai, who studies online conspiracy theories at the University of Washington, said the increased demand for testing and the higher prevalence of groundbreaking cases due to Omicron gives false information providers a “proper moment” to exploit. The false narratives “support the idea of ​​not trusting infection numbers or trusting death numbers,” he said.

Gateway Specialist did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok pointed out policies Banning false information that could harm people’s physical health. YouTube said it reviewed the videos shared by The New York Times in line with Covid-19 misinformation. policies about testing and diagnosis. Twitter said it had implemented a warning in December for violating The Gateway Pundit’s article. coronavirus misinformation policy and tweets containing false information about widely accepted testing methods would also violate its policy. However, the company said it did not take any action. personal anecdotes.

Facebook said it’s working with fact-checking partners to tag many of the posts with warnings that direct people to check the accuracy of false claims, reducing their prominence in their users’ posts.

“The challenges of the pandemic are constantly changing and we are constantly monitoring false claims that arise on our platforms,” ​​Facebook spokesperson Aaron Simpson said in an email.

No medical test is perfect, and legitimate questions abound about the accuracy of Covid-19 tests throughout the pandemic. there is was always a risk false positive or false negative result. The Food and Drug Administration says there is a potential antigen tests to return false positive results when users do not follow the instructions. A publisher by Dr. These tests are generally accurate when used correctly, but in some cases they can appear to show a positive result when exposed to other liquids, says Glenn Patriquin. Research About false positives in antigen tests using various fluids in a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.

D., assistant professor of pathology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. “Using a liquid with a different chemical makeup than designed means that result lines can appear unpredictably,” said Patriquin.

Complicated issues, there have been some defective products. Last year, the Australian company Ellume recalled About two million of the home-tested products shipped to the United States.

But when used correctly, coronavirus tests are considered reliable in detecting people with high levels of the virus. Experts say our evolving test knowledge must be a different problem than the lies about tests that are widely spread on social media – but that makes these lies more difficult to refute.

“Science is inherently uncertain and changes, which makes it extremely difficult to combat misinformation,” said Ms. Koltai.

The lies are on the rise despite efforts by social media companies to crack it down, researchers say, and many of them include lies that have emerged in the past.

The increase “fits the model of the misinformation industry during the pandemic,” said John Gregory, deputy health editor for NewsGuard, which assesses the credibility of news sites and monitors the prevalence of COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation. “Whatever the current mainstream story is, they seek their own narrative to undermine it.”

CDC aforementioned In July, it announced that it would withdraw its request to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization of a specific test at the end of the year. Hundreds of other Covid-19 tests are still available from other manufacturers, The CDC later announced.

Still, posts claiming that the agency was withdrawing support for PCR tests went viral on Facebook. According to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analysis tool, the most shared post that exposed the lie in July garnered 11,500 likes, shares and comments. The post added the lie that the CDC’s recommendation meant that PCR tests could not distinguish between coronavirus and flu, while in fact the agency recommended using tests that can simultaneously distinguish between flu and Covid-19.

Although it has been confirmed Within days, the claim never completely disappeared. The Gateway Pundit article revived the claim at the end of the year, nearly doubling the Facebook likes, shares, and comments of previous posts. On Instagram, screenshots of the article also went viral, garnering hundreds of likes.

Mr Gregory said a similar phenomenon had occurred in his social media posts claiming that various liquids had tested positive for coronavirus at home.

On December 23, 2020, a video on YouTube showed that he tested positive for coronavirus after being tested on kiwi, orange, and mulberry juice. It garnered more than 102,000 views. That same month, a video with the same results as Coca-Cola was posted on YouTube and was viewed 16,800 times.

A year later, a series of similar videos with the same theme appeared on TikTok and Instagram.

According to Ms. Koltai, the resurgence of false narratives even after social media companies tagged them a year ago demonstrates the power of misinformation to “evolve when it can hold onto a current event.”

“It makes the narratives culminate in this way at different times,” he said.