Smoking prevents you from getting infected with the coronavirus.
"The posts Indonesian-language caption translates to English as: “According to WHO smoking can prevent someone from getting infected with the CORONAVIRUS\xa0https://aktual.com/who-merokok-salah-satu-solusi-pencegaha…/”.", Below is the screenshot of the misleading post:, COVID-19\xa0was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan\xa0in late December 2019. The virus has killed more than 6,000 people and infected 163,930 worldwide, including sports stars, celebrities and world leaders, AFP reported\xa0here\xa0on March 16, 2020., A similar claim was shared\xa0on Facebook here, here, here and here., The claim\xa0is false; the WHO says smoking does not protect a person from getting infected with COVID-19 and warns that it can cause health conditions that increase the risk of severe coronavirus illness., The WHO\xa0refuted the claim on its Indonesia-based Twitter account on March 10, 2020, here, stating that smoking does not protect people from coronavirus infection., The Indonesian-language\xa0statement translates to English as: “Smoking does not protect you from COVID-19. In fact, it is proven that smoking kills. More than 8 million people die every year from smoking. Those who already have health conditions such as heart disease (which can worsen due to smoking) are at a high risk of suffering from severe COVID-19 disease.”, Benarkah merokok dapat melindungi Anda dari #COVID19? Tidak. Cek fakta berikut ini. pic.twitter.com/WTsloZxIrW, On its website here, the WHO says that smoking is not effective against COVID-2019 and can be harmful., "Below is a screenshot of the WHOs website:", On the same page, the WHO also provides suggestions to prevent the spread of the disease --\xa0and does not mention of smoking., "Below is a screenshot of the WHOs suggestions:", The WHO also posted a video\xa0on Twitter here entitled “7 simple steps to protect yourself and other from #COVID19”., These are 7 simple steps to protect yourself and others from #COVID19.\n\t\t👉 https://t.co/RU2gRs6jmc #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/TNAw5YrP0u, , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Smoking could increase your risk of developing severe coronavirus illness, WHO says | AFP Fact Check