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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Garlic won’t keep the coronavirus at bay. Neither will saltwater gargling or cow dung

  • From Singapore to Indonesia, dubious claims to prevent infection are spreading on social media and chat groups
  • The World Health Organisation has taken to debunking such home remedies, including the rumour that eating garlic will offer protection

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Fake remedies to protect against or cure the coronavirus are prevalent on social media and in chat groups. Photo: AFP
Kok Xinghuiin Singapore
Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan is known for exposing the scale of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2003 – and in some circles he is also known for recommending gargling with salt water to prevent infections of the novel coronavirus.
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The latter advice – despite being prevalent on social media and in chat groups – is not true. The scientist never gave such advice, and the method will not work.

As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world – it has infected more than 28,000 people so far, killing 563, while 911 have recovered – so too do home remedies claiming to stop it.

Singaporean fitness instructor Yeoh Wen Ning, 32, received a message about Zhong’s purported advice from her mother-in-law. Brushing it off as an old wives’ tale, she ignored the message and did not pass it on. “Actually, I didn’t read much of it,” Yeoh said. “I usually don’t pay much attention to such things.”

She might be savvy about disbelieving such dubious claims, but many others forward such messages along to friends and family. One who did so was a concerned aunt in the Singapore-based Chen family’s WhatsApp group chat. She said the novel coronavirus could be cured by drinking a bowl of freshly boiled garlic water.

“Old Chinese doctor has proven its efficacy,” the aunt wrote. “Many patients have also proven this to be effective.”

While the younger cousins dismissed the false remedy in a separate group chat, no one corrected their elders in the main family chat so as not to appear disrespectful – and so the home remedies spread on. There are recommendations to eat more kimchi, chicken soup, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic plants. And according to a chief of a Hindu political party in India, applying cow dung to one’s body can help combat the virus.

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