Soon after many countries imposed mandatory shutdown to curb the spread of Coronavirus and to force everyone to practice social practising, supermarkets all over the world were flooded with thousands of people. Multiple videos showing people's panic buying mode from rice, pulses, canned foods, snacks, diapers, hand sanitizers, toilet papers and other essentials have also surfaced online.
One of the items with high demand is toilet paper and several videos of people fighting over it at supermarkets have gone viral online. Now, a "news" claiming that over 6,000 people have contracted the deadly COVID-19 in the United States related to toilet papers, has started doing the rounds on social media.
The message is being shared with the screenshot of a television channel that shows "Breaking news: COVID-19 found in toilet paper. Strain of deadly virus breeds rapidly in tissue fibres." And as per the viral message, people are asked to start using wet clothes instead, as suggested by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Hoax busted
It has to be noted that this "viral news" was spotted first after been shared by the website Now8 News, which is known for spreading fake and satire news. The CDC has never promoted the use of wet clothes instead of tissue papers in its official website and the quotes by a person named "Peter Lendl" found in the article are just fabricated. Apart from this, the "news" has never been covered by any international news channels or trustable news websites, clearly indicating it to be a misleading hoax message.
Also, Snopes website, which is known for busting hoaxes found online, has clarified that they have been debunking misinformation published by Now8News since at least 2015. Similarly, another fake news was also created by some miscreants using the image of popular US journalist Wolf Blitzer with CNN news channel's logo. The weird idea "Constant sex kills coronavirus" had then gone viral on multiple social media platforms and was widely shared on Facebook and Whatsapp.
However, it was found to be a fake piece of information as the font used to share the bizarre idea doesn't match with the other texts or the normal font style followed by the channel.
