No, COVID-19 won’t respond to antibiotics, despite findings from new autopsies

When it comes to treating COVID-19, the world has it all wrong, a Facebook post claims.

"Autopsies prove that COVID-19 is a disseminated intravascular coagulation — pulmonary thrombosis. It is now clear that the whole world has been attacking the so-called coronavirus pandemic wrongly due to a serious pathophysiological diagnosis error," the lengthy post begins.

Autopsies performed by Italian pathologists, the post continues, show that COVID-19 "is not pneumonia, but it is disseminated intravascular coagulation, or thrombosis, which ought to be fought with antibiotics, antivirals, anti-inflammatories and anticoagulants. If this is true for all cases, that means the whole world is about to resolve this novel pandemic earlier than expected."

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

We’ve seen the terms so many times, but it doesn’t hurt to review.

COVID-19 is an abbreviation for coronavirus disease 2019 — a name given by the World Health Organization three months after the disease was discovered in Wuhan, China, in December.

As the various names suggest, the novel (as in new) coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 is a virus named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Antibiotics do not work against viruses; they only work on bacterial infections.

As Texas A&M University-Texarkana virologist Ben Neuman describes it, "COVID-19 starts out in the lungs like the common-cold coronaviruses, but then causes havoc with the immune system that can lead to long-term lung damage or death."

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The technical term cited in the Facebook post — "disseminated intravascular coagulation" — is "a rare but serious condition that causes abnormal blood clotting throughout the body’s blood vessels," according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a U.S. government agency. "It is caused by another disease or condition, such as an infection or injury, that makes the body’s normal blood clotting process become overactive."

As the post indicates, Italian pathologists did perform autopsies on people with COVID-19. 

But their study didn’t contradict what COVID-19 is; it merely reported on how the disease can damage lungs.

The pathologists examined the lung tissues of 38 COVID-19 patients who died in hospitals in northern Italy. They concluded that "the virus remains in lung tissue for many days, even if in small quantities, possibly being the trigger of the mechanism that leads to and feeds lung damage."

Their findings were posted in a preliminary study April 19. That study has not been peer reviewed, meaning it has not yet been evaluated by experts for formal publication in a medical journal. 

One of the pathologists on the study, Dr. Aurelio Sonzogni of Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, confirmed to PolitiFact that the study does not contradict the fact that COVID-19 is a virus that cannot be treated with antibiotics. Rather, his study found that lung damage caused by blood clots is one possible effect of COVID-19. The study has been accepted for publication in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, a London-based medical journal, he said.

"Autopsies prove that COVID-19 is" a blood clot, not pneumonia, "and ought to be fought with antibiotics," a Facebook post claimed," and the whole world has been wrong in treating the "so-called" pandemic.

The novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 is a virus. Viruses do not respond to antibiotic treatment; antibiotics only work on bacterial infections.

COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory illness that in some cases causes pneumonia. Another effect, according to the autopsies in Italy, is lung damage caused by blood clotting.

The post is false and ridiculous — Pants on Fire.