The form associated with a PCR test, in Bolivia, January 6, 2021. (illustration) -

Radoslaw Czajkowski / Shutterstock / SIPA

  • Several screenshots from a World Bank site are posted on Facebook.

  • They are supposed to prove that Covid-19 test material was already traded internationally in 2018.

  • The rumor, which results from a name change (corrected since to avoid this type of misunderstanding), is unfounded.

Almost a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the evidence that it was in fact planned for months, if not years, seems to be piling up ... at least if we are to believe the many unfounded rumors in this sense.

In one of his last Facebook posts, the lawyer Carlo Alberto Brusa, mobilized for several months on social networks and via his association Réaction 19 against the health measures of the government, which he considers liberticidal, thus claims to prove that " Covid-19 test orders [were made] in 2018 ”.

With, in support, two screenshots of the site "World Integrated Trade Solution" (WITS) showing the export figures of "instruments and devices for testing and diagnostic of Covid-19 by country in 2018".

This publication in fact takes up a viral rumor (English-speaking) which was already circulating in September 2020 and had been denied in the wake.

FAKE OFF

The World Integrated Trade Solution site does exist: this tool, created by the World Bank, lists a lot of data related to international trade.

Last September, Internet users could consult data from 2018 (and 2017) relating to “Covid-19 test kits”, as our colleagues from the Reuters press agency noted at the time.

However, as the World Bank explained in this same fact-checking article, the products in question had been labeled on the WITS website since 2017 "in much more technical terms that did not refer to Covid".

It was not until April 2020, several months after the start of the pandemic, that they were renamed in connection with the coronavirus in view of "the importance taken by these tools in the diagnosis and treatment of Covid -19 ”.

This change allowed WITS to facilitate the monitoring of this type of device in accordance with the new international designations recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Customs Organization (WCO).

Since the emergence of the initial rumor, in September therefore, the World Bank has renamed these devices to avoid any misunderstanding.

This can be verified directly on the WITS website, where they are simply called “medical test kits” or “medical diagnostic instruments and devices”.

“The data presented here relates to long-standing medical devices that are now classified by the WCO as essential to deal with Covid-19”, we can also read on these pages.

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