“Coronavirus in chicken” claim completely false, says NCDC

Social media is abuzz with rumours that the novel coronavirus diseases is spread through broiler chicken, but the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has shut it down as false.

“The NCDC can confirm that this is completely FALSE,” the centre said in a short statement it put out on social media, making sure to spell the word false in all capital letters.

“The public disregard this rumour and discourage further spread.”

The rumour began brewing after users on Facebook posted a picture of a half-shaven sick chick said to have been found infected with coronavirus in Bangalore, the capital of India’s southern state of Karnataka.

The post asked users to circulate the message and avoid “consumption of chicken”,

The post has been shared more than 1,100 times, according to India Today, which fact-checked the story in India.

“To verify the claim along with the image, we ran a reverse search and found that this photo of a sick chicken with blisters on its skin is available on the Internet for the last three months,” it reported.

“We found an article with the viral image published on November 21, 2019, on TAMIL 360 NEWZ. The article explains how broiler chickens are injected with chemicals so that they grow faster, but it also results in side-effects. The article does not mention anything about coronavirus.”

Coronavirus disease is zoonotic which means it can infect both humans and animals either. This one was until now termed “novel” because it emerged in humans for the first time.

It is believed to have come from an animal and there is a long list of possible animals.

“Scientists are working on identifying the animal source of this new virus,” said the NCDC.

“Currently, there is no known link between the virus and broiler chickens.”

Nigeria’s poultry industry is worth around $1.6 trillion, with 191 million chickens in different systems of production.

The country’s demand for poultry is 200 million birds—to produce 1.5 million tonnes of poultry meat.

But Nigeria can only meat a third of that demand, according to the Central Bank, with 1.2 million tonnes smuggled in from Benin Republic.