Day by day, the confirmed cases and the death toll is increasing globally due to the novel Coronavirus. Now, people all over the world are scared forcing them to believe anything and everything they find online related to this topic to be true.
So far, the pandemic has claimed the lives of 47,517 all over the globe, out of which 13,155 are reported from Italy alone. Recently, there were reports on the country facing space shortage issue in burying the dead bodies of the victims. Visuals of army trucks carrying many bodies of people had also surfaced online as the government had decided to bury everyone together in a pit as morgues and cemeteries have filled beyond their capacity.
The latest viral video
Soon after this news made headlines, a video showing bodies dumped into a ditch has started doing the rounds on social media. The clip has been shared with the message claiming that it shows the dead bodies of COVID-19 victims being thrown into a pit for mass burial in Italy.
In no time, it went viral with thousands of people sharing it on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. The background song heard in the viral video is from the Indian (Kannada) movie KGF: Chapter 1. "Someone who still wants to go out just because they are getting bored home should watch the videos of how dead bodies of people are being dumped as garbage in Italy," some netizens share the video with this message.
Hoax busted
The video that has surfaced online claiming to be the visuals of bodies being dumped in Italy amid the Coronavirus outbreak is false. The clip shared by many netizens is actually taken from a television series named Pandemic released in the US in 2007. The body dumping scene that is going viral now can also be seen in the trailer of the series. Watch it here.
The mini-series with just two episodes is about how the Americans dealt with the bird flu virus called the 'Riptide Virus' that infected many people in Los Angeles. The episodes are available on Amazon Prime for the users in the US.
Watch the actual clip from the series here:
Other 'hoax stories from Italy'
Similarly, many fake and misleading videos and photos claiming to be from Italy have gone viral on social media ever since the Coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Recently, a photo showing many coffins arranged together in a hall had also surfaced online, claiming it to be from Italy after the COVID-19 outbreak. However, it has been proved that the specific photo has no connection with the Coronavirus outbreak in the country. Though it was captured from Italy itself, they are the coffins of the African migrants killed in a shipwreck off the Italian coast in 2013.
Also, another photo showing many people lying on the streets went viral claiming to be the dead bodies lying on streets in Italy with no one to remove them. However, the picture was taken on March 24, 2014, in Frankfurt, Germany and the people seen in it lay down on the streets as part of an art project remembering all the people who died in the Nazi concentration camp.
