Fact Check: Adenoviruses Are NOT A New Threat Like COVID-19

Fact Check

  • by: Junsik Jung
Fact Check: Adenoviruses Are NOT A New Threat Like COVID-19 Mild Symptoms

Will Adenovirus be contagious like COVID-19 and result in a pandemic? No, that's not true: It has been around us for ages and the symptoms are mild as a common cold.

The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published on Tiktok by @rpm0313 on 16 Apr 2023 under the title "'์•„๋ฐ๋…ธ๋ฐ”์ด๋Ÿฌ์Šค'(HAdV) ์•„๋ฐ๋…ธ๋ฐ”์ด๋Ÿฌ์Šค์— ๊ฐ์—ผ๋˜๋ฉด ๋ˆˆ๊ผฝ์ด ์‹ฌํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๊ปด์„œ ๋ˆˆ๊ผฝ ๊ฐ๊ธฐ ๋ผ๊ณ  ๋ถ€๋ฅด๊ธฐ๋„ ํ•œ๋‹ค๋„ค์š”.. ์ฆ์ƒ์ด ์ฝ”๋กœ๋‚˜๋ณด๋‹ค ๋” ์‹ฌ๋‹คํ•˜๊ณ  ํ•˜๋‹ˆ ๋‹ค๋“ค ์กฐ์‹ฌํ•˜์„ธ์š” ๐Ÿค’": "'Adenovirus'(HAdV) Also known as sleep crust cold since when you get infected, you got lots of sleep crust in your eyes.. Be careful cause the symptom is severe than COVID." It opened:

Adenoviruses have more severe symptoms than COVID.

This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:

Adeno.JPG

(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Apr 18 17:52:19 2023 UTC)

Adenovirus is NOT a novel disease threatening us. In most cases, it comes with common cold or flu-like symptoms, fever or sore throat, according to CDC. The CDC also notes that 'Adenoviruses are common' on their website.

The video starts with a screenshot from a TV news package. The package was about the first case of 'acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children' reported in South Korea. The case is actually reported and Adenoviruses were pointed as the main cause. However, it was a year out of date when posted to TikTok. the package was aired May 10, 2022. Moreover, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) ended monitoring similar cases, in Dec 2022.

Plus, the graph shown in the video says the ratio of confirmed Adenovirus cases among common cold has increased from last year. However, it is easy to tell it is an outdated one; the data is from 'KCDC' (in Korean, '์งˆ๋ณ‘๊ด€๋ฆฌ๋ณธ๋ถ€'), a former body of KDCA (์งˆ๋ณ‘๊ด€๋ฆฌ์ฒญ). Since KCDC was renamed KDCA in 2020, the graph is from 2019 or even earlier.

Lead Stories is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers who are fighting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the alliance here.


  Junsik Jung

Junsik Jung is a Seoul-based freelance writer and fact-checker. He is currently studying journalism at Yonsei University. Previously he worked as an intern at CNN Seoul and wrote for various publications as a student reporter, ranging from the school newspaper to The Hankyoreh. When not working on a factcheck he can usually be found reading the news or playing a PC game.

Read more about or contact Junsik Jung

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