Facebook has been removing posts falsely claiming that 5G technology causes COVID-19, but this has not stopped conspiracy theorists from putting up posters in Birżebbuġa and Ta'Xbiex warning that the pandemic is a hoax. 

The posters, roughly taped to benches along the seafront, read: "COVID-19 is another reason to make vaccines mandatory and it was used as a scapegoat for respiratory illnesses and mass deaths caused by 5G".

While the conspiracy is largely irrelevant in Malta, where none of the mobile operators have yet applied for 5G technology, it has also been debunked by the World Health Organisation.

The conspiracy theory has become so widely shared that the WHO had to issue a statement telling people they would not contract coronavirus through 5G mobile networks. 

It explains that viruses do not travel on radio waves or mobile networks and that COVID-19 has spread in many countries that do not have 5G mobile networks.

It is spread through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. People can also be infected by touching their eyes, mouth or nose after touching contaminated surfaces. 

Conspiracy theories linking 5G, COVID-19 and vaccines have spread like wildfire across the globe. 

By mid-April, at least 20 phone masts across the UK were set alight or vandalised since the start of the coronavirus crisis. Similar instances were reported in other countries.

A charred base of a 5G mast that was set on fire in Belgium amid coronavirus conspiracy theories that have been debunked by WHO. Photo: AFP

The posters also flout another popular conspiracy theory by so-called 'anti-vax' activists: that coronavirus is "just another reason to make vaccines mandatory".  

But forgoing vaccinations can be dangerous.

In a Times of Malta article about the coronavirus, consultant paediatrician Victor Grech explained that forgoing vaccinations has resulted in a surge of infectious diseases that had been previously or nearly eradicated. 

A poster on a bench in Ta'Xbiex. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

“Such reoccurrences risk not only the ordinary public but greatly threaten the immunocompromised: from birth, after chemotherapy, after recovery from a serious illness, pregnant women, the elderly, and so on,” he said.

There are almost 3 million confirmed cases of of coronavirus and more than 206,000 deaths globally, including four in Malta. A vaccine has not yet been created.