Italy is not dumping coronavirus victims' bodies into a ditch
Last updated on: 01 April,2020 11:35 pm
The footage was taken from the 2007 US television programme Pandemic
A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook which claim it shows bodies of novel coronavirus victims being thrown into a ditch in Italy. The claim is false; the footage was taken from the 2007 US television programme Pandemic.
The video was published on Facebook on March 25, 2020. It has been viewed more than 130,000 times and shared at least 21,000 times.
The 18-second clip shows a truck dropping bodies wrapped in plastic into a ditch. The Islamic song “Har Khata Pe Sharamsar Hoon Main” can be heard playing throughout the video.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The blue and yellow text overlaid on the video in the misleading post reads: “position of italy / plz stay at Home..Save life.”
The post s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “See the situation of Italy. Be afraid of a time like this and still take precautions for yourself and for your loved ones.”
COVID-19 was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. As of March 31, it has killed more than 36,000 people and infected almost 754,000 others worldwide, according to data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Italy is Europe s worst-hit country, and as of March 30, 2020, its COVID-19 death toll stood at 10,779, according to this AFP report.
Several Facebook users commented on the post saying the video was not genuine, and had been taken from Pandemic, a television series that aired in the US in 2007.
A keyword search found this YouTube video titled "Pandemic 2007 Eric Roberts Trailer".
The misleading video can be seen at the one-minute 24-second mark of the YouTube video.
Below is a comparison of screenshots from the video in the misleading posts (L) and keyframes of the YouTube video (R) :
Pandemic is a television mini-series that aired in 2007, starring Tiffani Thiessen and Eric Roberts. According to the online movie database IMDb, the series tells a story of “a doctor from the CDC racing to find a vaccine as the bird flu virus spreads through Los Angeles”.