The Covid-19 virus does exist

A post on Instagram liked more than 74,000 times shares a video clip in which a woman falsely claims: “The COVID-19 [virus] doesn’t exist”.

The clip comes from a longer video interview that the late Dr Lorraine Day gave some time ago, before her death in November 2023. We’ve not been able to find the original source.

We recently published another fact check about similar claims that Dr Day made in another video in March 2021. 

Contrary to Dr Day’s comments in both videos, the Covid-19 virus does exist, as we have said several times before. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease Covid-19, has been isolated many times and continues to be detected in hundreds of tests each week in England alone.

In the section of the longer video immediately before the clip, Dr Day says: “The coronavirus doesn’t exist.” This helps to understand what she meant in this Instagram video when she called it “the Covid-19”.

False information can spread quickly on social media and may be harmful if people use it to make decisions about their health. 

Full Fact approached the author of this post for comment.