DONALD TRUMP has been sanctioned by both Facebook and Twitter after appearing to suggest Covid-19 is not as deadly as the flu.
The President made the claims in a post shared on both social media platforms just a day after leaving hospital after being diagnosed with coronavirus.
Trump, who is continuing his recovery in isolation at the White House, described the coronavirus as “less lethal” than flu.
The claims came despite more than 210,000 Americans succumbing to the virus.
In the now-deleted tweet, he wrote the US had "learned to live with" flu season, "just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!"
Twitter opted to hide the message, promoting the widely discredited claim Covid-19 is not as bad as flu, behind a warning against "spreading misleading and potentially harmful information".
TwitterUnder the change, users are now required to click past the alert to read the tweet.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Covid-19 is thought to be roughly 10 times deadlier than flu.
Facebook, meanwhile, opted to delete the post entirely, explaining that Trump broke the
platform's rules on Covid-19 misinformation.
A Facebook company spokesperson said: "We remove incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19 and have now removed this post.”
The incident represents the second time Facebook has deleted a post from the US President while Twitter has previously intervened on several occasions.
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