Nobel laureate dismisses fake news about coronavirus role

A post has been circulating falsely claiming that 2018 Nobel laureate Dr Dénis Mukwege resigned from COVID-19 response teams in DR Congo because he had been ordered to declare illnesses and deaths to be coronavirus-related even when they were not.

He has resigned but not for the reasons being claimed.

The false post was published on Facebook on 16 June and was widely shared, with a screenshot being shared on WhatsApp too.

"I cannot in any case dirty my Nobel Peace Prize for money, we had been ordered to declare any illness to be coronavirus and any death,” the post claims he said.

Dr Mukwege has been serving in two teams set up to coordinate the response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the South Kivu province in eastern DR Congo for the past two months.

He announced his resignation on 10 June saying lack of laboratories for testing for the virus had frustrated his work.

He also cited a lax attitude to social distancing or other measures among the population, porous borders, and the return of thousands of DR Congo citizens from neighbouring countries without having been quarantined. He said that decreased the effectiveness of the team’s’ strategy.

Dr Mukwege said he was resigning to devote himself to treating an influx of patients at the Panzi Hospital which is run by his foundation.

A spokesperson for Dr Mukwege told the BBC any statement not appearing on his official social media pages and websites is fake.

Nowhere in his resignation statement does Dr Mukwege mention having been forced to declare negative coronavirus cases to be positive.