This article blows up in Nigeria: “BREAKING: Buhari orders importation of Madagascar Covid-19 ‘remedy’ http://bit.ly/2LwfYAl”, with more than 8 500 likes/retweets.This tweet goes viral, with no references or evidence: “Madagascar has a coronavirus recovery rate of 72%. Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea have purchased and taken packages of Madagascar’s Coronavirus medicine. It has lifted its lockdown. It is compulsory for its students to drink their coronavirus medicine, Covid Organics.
Today, Madagascar itself agreed the herbal doesn’t cure the virus, and it’s now seeking for help elsewhere, desperately.” It got more than 3 700 likes, and more than 1 000 retweets and comments.Tweet: “Madagascar went from wanting to sell the cure for Covid-19 to being the country with one of the worst Covid-19 outbreak on the continent.”Tweet: “I was called all sorts for insinuating that the Madagascar herbal miracle cure was a sham and for asking for non-anecdotal, concrete evidence.
Chemists Peter Seeberger and Kerry Gilmore with the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany have worked with. This work led the start-up company ArtemiFlow to produce medications based on the plant. Building on the existing partnership with ArtemiLife, the new arms of the clinical trial will test the effectiveness of the plant extract.In South Africa, African wormwood is among six herbs that government is trialling against Covid-19. About R15 million has been diverted from existing indigenous knowledge projects to fund the research.