Correction request sent to Repustar/FactSparrow (Updated/Corrected)

Fact checker Repustar, represented on Twitter as “FactSparrow,” published a fact brief that (we believed) confused hospital admissions for coronavirus with coronavirus hospitalizations, though the CDC reports very different statistics for each.

After seeing no movement on the issue based on Twitter outreach, Zebra Fact Check emailed Repustar to encourage a correction to the misinformation (we believed we detected).

Update Sept. 16, 2021:

On Sept. 14, 2021, Repustar Editorial Director John Marcom responded to our request with an email showing we based our correction request on a wrong interpretation of CDC data. Find that email, with our response, in the document embedded after the original correction request.

In response Marcom’s email, we have updated this item, added parenthetical corrections to the original post in bold above, and published a correction announcement with the details of the correction.

Of note, our response suggests a different reason why the Repustar fact check may mislead its audience. CDC appears to count any hospitalized patient as a patient hospitalized with coronavirus if that patient tests positive for the virus. That method of defining hospitalized coronavirus patients would appear to count cases where the presence of the positive test was incidental to the hospitalization.

If Repustar responds to that point, we will continue to update this page.