Graphene does not cause covid-19 disease

You have sent us a video through WhatsApp in which a man who self-identifies as Ricardo Delgado and says being a biostatistician ensures that SARS-CoV-2 is, in reality, graphene oxide and that this material is the responsible for causing covid-19 and that, for this reason, there was never "real isolation" of the virus. This is FALSE. Autopsies of deceased covid-19 patients have revealed the presence of the virus in affected organs and body systems, and SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and sequenced in several countries.

"Graphene oxide is the supposed SARS-CoV-2, the alleged new coronavirus, cause of the disease named covid-19. That is why we never had a real isolation and purification of a new coronavirus as most health institutions in different countries acknowledge when consulted about it".

Virus isolation is the process by which it is possible to reproduce it in large quantities in the laboratory to study its structure, weaknesses and strengths. That is, it is a process that allows us to know the virus in question. There are multiple studies detailing the procedure followed to isolate SARS-CoV-2, in the United States, como en Italy o Korea, among others.

Another way to understand the characteristics of a virus is to sequence its genome. That is, identifying each and every one of the letters that make up its RNA, in order to control possible changes or mutations. China was the first country to sequence the complete genome of the virus, while the Instituto de Salud Carlos III did it for the first time in Spain in March 2020.

Genetic sequence is also the tool that has allowed identifying the different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 which are currently circulating. In fact, EU countries, including Spain, have developed protocols for sequencing a representative part of the positive tests they perform, in order to "determine the incidence of the variants of interest" in each country.

Autopsies show the presence of SARS-CoV-2

Throughout the video, the man claims that some of the symptoms associated with covid-19 (such as loss of taste and smell), as well as the pathologies suffered by people with the most severe forms of the disease (bilateral pneumonia, thrombosis, or blood clotting) are actually generated by graphene oxide, and that it is this material that is behind covid-19, not SARS-CoV-2. In a nutshell, graphene oxide is the oxidised form of graphene, a carbon-based material whose properties include its ability to conduct heat and electricity.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, multiple autopsies have been carried out on patients who died as a result of covid-19, the results of which have been published in scientific articles. These do not mention the presence of graphene in the bodies of the affected persons, but rather indicate that SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of the different conditions shown in the cadavers, as can be read in a review of scientific articles related to autopsies on deceased patients with covid-19 carried out in October 2020. Many of these studies have looked for – and found – traces of the virus in different organs.

For example, a study published in September 2020 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, describing findings from autopsies of 22 Italian patients, reported that "SARS-CoV-2 was detected in a range of clinical samples […] indicating widespread shedding" of the virus in patients' bodies. Another study published in the eLife journal on the autopsy of 11 patients who died of covid-19 revealed a high viral load in the lungs and RNA copies of the virus in multiple organs of the body.

Recurrent misinformation

The video presents other recurrent misinformation, such as that covid-19 vaccines contain graphene, or that they have the property of magnetising the arm of the person who has taken the injection. Both have already been denied by Verificat.