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People in several countries have been sharing a link to a webpage connected to the World Bank saying it shows test kits for Covid-19 were being exported in 2017, long before the disease was known to exist.

The claim on social media is that this is evidence the pandemic was planned all along – but this is false and we can settle any doubts about what’s going on.

The page is genuine and includes trade information under the heading “Covid-19 test kits exports by country in 2017”. So you can understand why this might have caused some confusion.

It’s from a database run by international organisations including the World Bank. According to the World Bank, the page was created to make it easier to find all of the previously existing products that are now being used for Covid-19.

All the medical devices listed on the site have had other uses for many years, but they were re-labelled to ease the tracking of items that are particularly important to tackle coronavirus.

The title of the page has been amended to “medical kits” and to avoid further misunderstanding includes a disclaimer that says, “The data here track previously existing medical devices that are now classified by the World Customs Organization as critical to tackling Covid-19.”

The claim appears to have emerged on English-language Facebook late last week and then spread across Twitter, Instagram and Reddit over the weekend.

Over the past few days it has also been shared in Italian, German, Polish, Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch and other languages.

The allegations have also been amplified by opponents of vaccination and supporters of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.