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Global Voices
Global Voices
Two packs of Lianhua Qingwen distributed by Hong Kong government. Photo by Oiwan Lam. While Shanghai residents are struggling with food shortages, they have an abundant supply of “Lianhua Qingwen,” a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) composed of extracts of a dozen herbs which has been widely used to treat COVID-19 in China, although the effectiveness of the medicine is not supported by reliable clinical data. As Shanghai is distributing the herbal capsules to the city’s 26 million residents, false claims that the drug can effectively protect against COVID-19 have flooded Chinese social media…