A Chinese citizen undergoing testing for coronavirus while passing through a temporary corridor opened at a border checkpoint between Blagoveshchensk and Heihe. Temporary corridors are opened to return Russian and Chinese citizens to their countries as the Russian government orders to close the border with China as a measure to prevent the coronavirus spread. All the people passing through the temporary corridor are tested for the virus.

Some of the World Health Organization's recent Twitter posts may seem like obvious statements, but amid rapidly spreading misinformation about the new coronavirus, thousands if not millions of people are being exposed to false health warnings and quack treatment methods.

"There is no evidence from the current outbreak that eating garlic has protected people from 2019-nCoV," the WHO posted on its official Twitter account last week, along with the hashtag #KnowtheFacts.

Fake alerts and posts circulating on social media, often claiming to be from the WHO or a national health ministry, include bogus suggestions that garlic, sesame oil and vitamin C can kill this particular strand of coronavirus, first identified in the city of Wuhan, China in late December.

One alert widely shared in the United Arab Emirates via popular messaging service Whatsapp, falsely attributed to the country's Ministry of Health, warns that the virus will "invade" your throat "within 10 minutes" if you don't drink enough water. None of these are true, and there is as yet no cure for the deadly virus that's now killed more than 400 people and sickened more than 20,000.

WHO garlic tweet

The WHO, which has declared the illness a global health emergency, is warning against misinformation and the harm it can cause.

In Malaysia, five people have been arrested for spreading fake news about the virus — one post shared on Facebook, falsely claiming to be from a government department, showed a fake picture of the virus and read in Malay: "This is an image of one of many 'Allah's armies' sent to attack China in the form of coronavirus. This is the actual image of the virus as seen under a very powerful microscope." The post was shared more than 700 times.