Drinking unsweetened black tea before the sun rises cures coronavirus. This was prophetised by a newborn baby, who died shortly after uttering the cure.
A post shared on Facebook in Kenya claims drinking sugarless black tea before sunrise will cure Covid-19., “Hii story ya dawa ya corona imetoka wapi. Chemsha strong tea bila sukari before the sun rises. You will thank me later,” the post reads. The Kiswahili translates as: “Where’s the story about a drug for coronavirus? Drink black tea without sugar before the sun rises.”, The claim made it to Kenya’s mainstream media after journalist Sigomba Ramadhan Omar wrote in the Standard newspaper that he was woken at dawn by his mother to drink sugarless black tea., “I have received a call from your grandfather that a child has uttered seven words at birth in Pokomo, Tana River,” Omar said his mother told him. “The seven words were ‘Dawa ya corona ni chai ya rangi’.” This loosely translates to “the cure for coronavirus is black tea”., Another news story broadcast on 30 March 2020 on NTV, a mainstream Kenyan TV channel, showed people saying they were woken by viral messages telling them to drink black tea., According to the rumours, the child died shortly after he uttered the “cure”. And it’s made people across Kenya wake up early for this new treatment., But does drinking unsweetened black tea at dawn cure Covid-19?, In his Standard column, Omar pointed out the holes in the story. Different messages claimed the baby was from different towns in the region, and the parents were unnamed., In the comments section to the Facebook post, users argued about where the baby was born., And babies can’t talk within a few hours of birth, as shown in this scientific paper., “Tea cannot protect one from infection with Covid-19,” Dr Moses Masika, a virologist at the University of Nairobi, told Africa Check., “The root of this story may be the fact that tea has a compound called theophylline as one of the active ingredients,” he said., “In its pure form, theophylline is used to treat, not prevent, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, at doses much higher than what one would derive from tea. Theophylline has not been shown to be beneficial for the prevention or treatment of Covid-19.”, Africa Check has already debunked a claim that “regular” tea, fever grass tea and African lemongrass tea can cure Covid-19., Kenyans can sleep in. Unfortunately, tea won’t protect anyone from the coronavirus, even if they drink it at dawn. – Vincent Ng’ethe, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
No, drinking black tea at dawn won’t cure coronavirus | Africa Check