The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a series of “alarmist” and “scaremongering” ads for face masks that it said played on people’s fears over the coronavirus outbreak.
In rulings published on Wednesday, the regulator found that online ads from two companies breached its code and were misleading, irresponsible and “likely to cause fear without reasonable justification”.
What is Covid-19 - the illness that started in Wuhan?
It is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city.
Have there been other coronaviruses?
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (Mers) are both caused by coronaviruses that came from animals. In 2002, Sars spread virtually unchecked to 37 countries, causing global panic, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing more than 750. Mers appears to be less easily passed from human to human, but has greater lethality, killing 35% of about 2,500 people who have been infected.
What are the symptoms caused by the new coronavirus?
The virus can cause pneumonia. Those who have fallen ill are reported to suffer coughs, fever and breathing difficulties. In severe cases there can be organ failure. As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use. The antiviral drugs we have against flu will not work. Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system. Many of those who have died were already in poor health.
Should I go to the doctor if I have a cough?
UK Chief Medical Officers are advising anyone who has travelled to the UK from mainland China, Thailand, Japan, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Macau in the last 14 days and who is experiencing a cough or fever or shortness of breath to stay indoors and call NHS 111, even if symptoms are mild.
Is the virus being transmitted from one person to another?
China’s national health commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission, and there have been such transmissions elsewhere.
How many people have been affected?
As of 6 March, the global death toll was 3,404, while more than 100,000 people have been infected in more than 80 countries, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Why is this worse than normal influenza, and how worried are the experts?
We don’t yet know how dangerous the new coronavirus is, and we won’t know until more data comes in. The mortality rate is around 2% at the centre of the outbreak, Hubei province, and less than that elsewhere. For comparison, seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate below 1% and is thought to cause about 400,000 deaths each year globally. Sars had a death rate of more than 10%.
Another key unknown is how contagious the coronavirus is. A crucial difference is that unlike flu, there is no vaccine for the new coronavirus, which means it is more difficult for vulnerable members of the population – elderly people or those with existing respiratory or immune problems – to protect themselves. Hand-washing and avoiding other people if you feel unwell are important. One sensible step is to get the flu vaccine, which will reduce the burden on health services if the outbreak turns into a wider epidemic.
Is the outbreak a pandemic?
A pandemic, in WHO terms, is “the worldwide spread of a disease”. Coronavirus cases have been confirmed outside China, but by no means in all 195 countries on the WHO’s list. It is also not spreading within those countries at the moment, except in a very few cases. By far the majority of cases are travellers who picked up the virus in China.
Should we panic?
No. The spread of the virus outside China is worrying but not an unexpected development. The WHO has declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. The key issues are how transmissible this new coronavirus is between people, and what proportion become severely ill and end up in hospital. Often viruses that spread easily tend to have a milder impact. Generally, the coronavirus appears to be hitting older people hardest, with few cases in children.
One advertiser, Novads OU, based in Tallinn, Estonia, ran display ads and webpages for an Oxybreath Pro face mask, which highlighted the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak and referred to a “growing sense of panic” before touting the mask’s “unparallelled [sic] protection.”
Another ad for the face mask, which appeared on the CNN website through the Outbrain network, linked to a webpage that claimed the virus was spreading at “the speed of light” and declared “peace of mind is priceless during this terrifying time” and urged people to buy the mask while it was still available.
Yet another ad appeared on the Scottish Sun website and linked to a webpage that resembled a news story. It warned that the “nano-tech” face mask was “selling out fast”.
Novads OU did not respond to the ASA’s inquiries about the adverts or its ruling that the ads should not appear again. The company’s UK telephone number was answered by a woman who identified as Sheila in Hong Kong, who said a representative from the firm would respond to the Guardian.
She said queries should also be made to an email address for a firm called Hyperstech.com. Neither provided a response.
The ASA also ruled against Easy Shopping 4 Home, a UK-based trader on Amazon marketplace, for promoting an “anti-coronavirus” respirator, a phrasing the regulator believed would exploit concerns about the virus.
The firm also failed to respond to the ASA’s inquiries. The Guardian did not receive a response from the company.
In both cases, the watchdog upheld the challenge that the companies’ adverts were “misleading, irresponsible and scaremongering”.
“We’ve banned these ads for face masks because the claims they made went against advice offered by the public health authority, Public Health England, and were therefore misleading,” said Matt Wilson at the ASA.
“They were also irresponsible because they were alarmist and played on people’s fears. PHE do not recommend the use of face masks as a means of protection from coronavirus.
“Our rulings don’t, and we’re not seeking to, comment more generally on the efficacy of face masks or the legitimate right for companies to sell them or people to wear them.”
The intervention came a week after Facebook banned ads for products that claimed to cure or prevent Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, or which created a “sense of urgency” about the outbreak.
Face masks may offer some protection against the virus by forming a barrier against the larger droplets that infected people cough into the air. But exhaled droplets quickly shrink and virus particles are small enough to penetrate masks without high-specification filters.
One concern is that masks can give people a false sense of reassurance that leads them to be less vigilant on other hygiene measures, such as regular hand washing and not touching the eyes, nose or mouth.
The ASA has worked with Amazon and other platforms that carried the face mask ads to remove the pages and adverts from their networks.
The platforms were monitoring for similar adverts and taking action against them as necessary, Wilson said. They have also updated their policies in response to the latest advice from health authorities and off the back of the ASA rulings, he added.
