A closed circuit television footage showing corpses of three children being placed inside one body bag is circulating on social media and at least two Filipino netizens are falsely claiming it was taken in a hospital in Wuhan, China.
The caption of the two posts says: “WUHAN CHINA 2nd WAVE. Putting 3 children’s bodies in one bag in hospital in wuhan china. to save two bags or to count only one in death toll?”
This is false. First, there is no proof the video was taken in Wuhan.
Among the earliest uploads of the clip was published on Twitter. After several netizens presumed the video was taken in Wuhan, the publisher of the clip on Twitter wrote in a follow-up tweet, translated from Chinese: “We didn’t say it was in Wuhan.”
An article published by British tabloid Daily Express places the video in Hangzhou, Zhejiang — an eight-hour drive from Wuhan — and claims that the children died of carbon monoxide poisoning “according to media reports.” However, no other news organization has reported this information.
A reverse image search of the clip’s key frames reveals it has been making the rounds on the Web as early as Feb. 11, according to Taiwanese media TVBS News Network and Liberty Times and a U.S.-based website Vision Times that reported on a copy of the footage uploaded on YouTube. The YouTube clip has since been deleted.
The TVBS, Liberty Times and Vision Times stories did not conclude that the video was taken in Wuhan.
Second, the video that was published by at least three local netizens from May 22 to 26, has been circulating as early as February, rendering false the suggestion that it indicates a “second wave” situation.
Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus disease outbreak in China, was placed on lockdown on Jan. 23 and reopened on April 8. The city recorded new cases on May 10, prompting authorities to order a mass testing of its population.
The discovery of new cases early May led its local government to launch a campaign aiming to test all of Wuhan’s 11 million residents in order to prevent a second wave of the outbreak. It currently only has six confirmed cases as of May 25.
Recent reports by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and news.com.au cite the Wuhan government as saying it has tested nine million people from May 14 to 25. It recorded about 218 asymptomatic carriers of the coronavirus, “who were put under quarantine and monitored for symptoms,” according to the WSJ story.
The netizens’ posts surfaced two days after Health Secretary Francisco Duque III announced the Philippines is facing a second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. An official from the Department of Health clarified a day later that the country is still facing its first wave of “sustained community transmission.”
The two netizens’ videos have collectively been shared over 800 times and have nearly 30,000 views. Another version of the false posting, which has since been taken down, was shared more than 8,700 times and was viewed over 320,000 times.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
