On March 30, News Front Georgia published an article titled “Pro-Saakashvili Customs Officers Took Away Presents from War Veterans Aged 95 and Older!”. According to News Front, Soviet symbols were taken away from Temur Pipia, the Head of the United Communist Party of Georgia, on Larsi border point. The article mentions that Pipia was carrying...

On March 29, 2020, the anti-liberal online edition “Alt-Info” published an article headlined “ Serbian Patriarchate: The Church will not cease Divine Liturgy and communion”. The article concerns the decision issued by Serbian Church on March 28, by which the church changed the details of communion to prevent coronavirus-related threats. The article published by Alt-Info...

On March 24 and March 25, 2020, online editions Progressnews and Marshalpress, respectively, released identical articles headlined “Poland closed its airspace to Russian planes carrying aid to Italy.” According to the articles, Poland closed its airspace to Russian plane Il-76, carrying medical equipment to assist Italy in tackling the coronavirus. Marshalpress and Progressnews noted that...

On March 23, Georgian Facebook user Vladimer Martali published a photo and text, stating that American doctors created a vaccine against the coronavirus. The photo shows the medicine packages with inscriptions in English “COVID-19”. The post had up to 8 thousand shares, more than 800 comments and 2.2 thousand reactions.  On the second day (March...

On March 24-25, antiliberal Facebook pages, as well as members of ultranationalist movement Georgian March reported that Tamta Mikeladze, one of the founders of Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC), has allegedly filed a lawsuit in court against the Marneuli and Hujabi Eparchy. They claimed that the lawsuit was against blessing the streets with...

On March 24-25, several Georgian editions (presa.ge, progressnews.ge, marshalpress.ge, readtime.ge, Newpost.ge , alia.ge, For.ge, info9.ge, msoflio.ru)  based on World News Daily Report, disseminated news titled “Belgium’s Minister of Health Bans Sexual Intercourse between Three or More People”. The articles mention that the reason behind this decision was the reputation of Belgium, which, according to the...

On March 23, abcnews.com.ge published a news article titled “Unprecedented Decision: Bidzina Ivanishvili Allocated GEL 500 million for Healthcare”. The article positively assesses the measures taken by the Government of Georgia and the respective state institutions against coronavirus, followed by a list of investments made by Cartu Foundation in healthcare. In the context of the...

On March 19, tvalsazrisi.ge published news titled “This is How Coronavirus Came to Be (Video)”. The article explains that “horrible footage” has been leaked from Wuhan wet markets. The body of the article comes with an embedded Facebook video that redirects to a video published by the official Facebook page of a Bangladeshi mullah, Nizam...

Narmin Ayvazova Narmin Ayvazova is doing her third academic year at the Faculty of Economy and Business at Tbilisi State University, majoring in Tourism and Business Administration. She currently serves as a PR representative of Salam platform, is an attendee at Caucasian House’s Public University, and is a participant of Emerging Leaders School (ELS) by...

On March 17, several media outlets (metronome.ge, newposts.ge, gadacema.ge, alia.ge  and cyc.ge) spread information about the study conducted by Chinese researchers related to coronavirus and blood types. According to the media reports, scientists in China took blood group patterns of more than 2,000 patients infected with the virus in Wuhan and Shenzhen and found that blood...

Nestan Ananidze Nestan Ananidze is a third-year law student at Tbilisi State University. Nestan is currently a member of the “Solidarity Platform” of the “Human Rights and Monitoring Center (EMC)”. In addition, she is a member of the non-governmental organization “Civic Hall” and her civic activism is aimed at the development of the regions of...

On March 20, progressnews.ge released an article headlined “Money no longer plays an active role in virus transmission; still, China burned 200 billion.” The article refers to the Facebook post of analyst Amiran Salukvadze, according to which the World Health Organization (WHO) allegedly stated that cash money no longer transmits coronavirus. Salukvadze’s remarks were also...