Coronavirus: Wuhan Video Shared Falsely As People Crying for Help
People of Wuhan were not screaming for help, rather were chanting patriotic songs to cheer each other up.
CLAIM
Amid the Coronavirus outbreak and with China’s Wuhan being its epicentre, a video is being circulated on social media with a claim that the people of Wuhan city in China are locked in their homes, screaming for life.
Editor-in-chief of news channel Bharat Samachar Brajesh Misra, shared the video with the claim that people in Wuhan are crying for help and that instead of giving medical aid to them, they have been locked in their homes.
His tweet, when translated in English reads: “These people of Wuhan city of China are screaming from their homes and begging for life. Instead of treatment, help, they have been locked in homes. These screams of the people of China will pursue the world community for centuries. Coronavirus is moving towards its extreme level. India will have to prepare immediately.”
His tweet, had garnered over 9,200 likes and 5,100 retweets at the time of writing this story.
The video has also been shared on Facebook by multiple users with the same claim.
TRUE OR FALSE?
False.
The video indeed is from the Wuhan city of China but the claim that people are screaming for their lives is false. A South China Morning Post article dated 28 January carried the same video and mentioned that the people of Wuhan city were chanting slogans to lift each other’s spirits.
WHAT WE FOUND
On conducting a reverse image search, we found a similar tweet by a user ‘Madhav Singh Rathore’ who tweeted the same video where we saw a logo on the top-right corner and South China Morning Post written at the end of the video.
Taking a cue from there, we searched on Google with the keywords ‘South China Morning Post Wuhan City screaming’.
We, then, came across several reports by media outlets including South China Morning Post and Nation Thailand.
According to the South China Morning Post article dated 28 January, the residents of Wuhan City have been shouting out of their windows and singing patriotic songs to cheer each other up. Wuhan has been under lockdown since 23 January after Coronavirus outbreak.
Evidently, the claim that people of Wuhan are screaming and begging for their lives amidst the coronavirus outbreak, is false.
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