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Health experts have debunked President Donald Trump’s suggestion to potentially use sunlight to treat coronavirus patients. But some social media users say the president is onto something.
An April 24 Facebook post shows an image of what appears to be someone hooked up to an IV that is emanating blue light. The caption claims it shows a “UV radiation” treatment.
“For all you dummies that have absolutely no idea what trump is talking about… INTERNAL DISINFECTANT aka Ultraviolet Radiation is administered into the body as a ‘disinfectant’ to kill bacteria and viruses and this has been used for a while now,” reads the post.
“There is no evidence that injecting UV light into the body will kill bacteria or viruses,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University, in an email. “We irradiate blood that has been taken out of the body, but that is different than using UV light. I am not sure what that picture is in the Facebook post.”
The Facebook post is inaccurate. Read the full fact-check.
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Alex Mahadevan is a senior multimedia reporter at MediaWise. He can be reached at amahadevan@poynter.org or on Twitter at @AlexMahadevan. Follow MediaWise on TikTok.
