False claims about home-made remedies and cures for Covid-19 have been doing rounds since the beginning of the pandemic. A claim encouraging people to mix a blood-thinning medicine with honey and lemons as a treatment for COVID-19 is widely shared on social media in Sri Lanka. It is false.

Multiple posts on social media and now on WhatsApp claim that aspirin, lemon juice, and honey have been combined to make a “home remedy for COVID-19 in Italy. The claim is misleading. We received this message as a WhatsApp forward on our First Check group with requests to verify the information being widely circulated in Sri Lanka.

The message reads “the impressive case of a Mexican family in the United States who claimed they were cured with a home remedy was documented: three 500 mg aspirins dissolved in lemon juice boiled with honey, taken hot. The next day they woke up as if nothing had happened to them!”

The text of the message can be read below:

The message further claims, “this information was released by a medical researcher from Italy: Thanks to 50 autopsies performed on patients who died of COVID-19, Italian pathologists have discovered that IT IS NOT PNEUMONIA”.

However, COVID-19 guidance released by Italy’s Ministry of Health makes no reference to any such remedy.

We searched the WHO’s global research on COVID-19 repository and found that there is no scientific finding to validate the cure and WHO does not recommend any home-cure or remedy for Covid-19. The WHO maintains at this time, there are no specific vaccines or treatments for COVID-19.

However, there are many ongoing clinical trials evaluating potential treatments. The WHO says that it will continue to provide the updated information “as soon as clinical findings become available.”