Home COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing O2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia.

Fact-checked by: Science Feedback

2020/04/09 | United States

FALSE: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing O2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia.

Explanation: The claim that COVID-19 causes hypoxia because the causative virus binds to hemoglobin in red blood cells is unsupported. For starters, no scientific evidence demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 can enter red blood cells. The claim that the virus binds to hemoglobin is founded on the conclusions of a single pre-print, which solely involves computational analysis, without experimental verification or peer-review. The mechanism proposed is also inconsistent with clinical evidence from COVID-19 patients.

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This false claim originated from: Andrew Gaiziunas, Medium

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