Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

May 6, 2020

Geospatial Correlation Between COVID-19 Health Misinformation and Poisoning with Household Cleaners

Category:

Topic:

  • Chary et al. compared tweets from the Greater Boston Area discussing treating COVID-19 with house cleaners to calls to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Poison Control Center (MARI PCC). Half of the spikes in calls to MARI PCC about cleaner ingestions were preceded 2-3 days earlier by tweets advocating ingesting or injecting bleach to cure COVID-19. These results implicate health misinformation on social media may lead to secondary harm. 

Chary et al. (May 5, 2020). Geospatial Correlation Between COVID-19 Health Misinformation and Poisoning with Household Cleaners. Pre-print downloaded May 6 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.30.20079657