A viral clip showing black body bags occupying several rooms of a hospital is being shared online with a false claim that it is from a hospital in New York, which is currently battling an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
In the 51-second clip, a person wearing a medic suit, walks around shooting the body bags lying around on the floor.
The disturbing clip is being shared with the caption, "Situation in a New York hospital...Full of dead bodies.. to all those who still haven't understood the lockdown importance."
BOOM received the video on its WhatsApp helpline number (7700906111) from multiple readers.
We found the video was being shared with the same false claim on Facebook as well.
The video is viral in the backdrop of a video shared on social media which appears to show body bags being loaded onto a refrigerated lorry outside a hospital in Brooklyn, New York City. (Read more here)
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FACT-CHECK
We broke the video into key-frames and ran a reverse image search using Russian search engine Yandex.
The search results showed a tweet that said the clip is from Ecuador as one of the names mentioned on the body bag is an Ecuadorian citizen.
"Ecuadorean authorities said on Monday they would improve the collection of corpses, as delays related to the rapid spread of the new coronavirus has left families keeping their loved ones' bodies in their homes for days in some cases." https://t.co/JLmoHk49Fa
— Daniel Sinclair (@_DanielSinclair) April 1, 2020
In the viral video, at the 28 seconds timestamp on a black bag, the name - 'Zambrano Loor GIlbert' can be seen.
Screenshot from the viral video with the patient's name visible
On searching further with that name, we found an article on the same video by Maldita.es, a Spanish fact-checking website that had debunked the false claim when it was earlier shared as Madrid.
According to Maldita.es the video was recorded at a hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, as they were able to match the name - 'Zambrano Loor GIlbert' with a condolence letter issued by the Association of Real Estate Brokers of Guayas (ACBIR) made after his death in March 2020.
Archive of the condolence letter accessed by maldita.es
Click here to view an archive.
BOOM could not independently ascertain the location of the video, however, the video is not from a hospital in New York as being claimed on social media.
At the time of writing this story, New York has reported 72,181 positive COVID-19 cases and recorded 3485 deaths, according to a real-time data monitor by John Hopkins University.
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