Does a photo of hundreds of people lying on the street acurrately depict the dire situation in Italy due to the coronavirus? No, this is not the case: The picture claiming to show people dead and ill splayed on a the street in Italy - and as a warning to do more in the United States - actually dates to 2014 and is of a German rememberance project for the 528 victims of the Holocaust who perished in Frankfurt's Katzbach Nazi conentration camp.
At least one other picture in the collage in a Facebook post was also stolen. But there is no relation between these pictures and COVID-19, the formal name for the novel coronavirus.
The claim is made in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on March 22, 2020. Above the collage was this alarming description and dire warning:
This is what's happening in Italy,
People are lying outside the hospital on the streets due to shortage of beds and hospital staff.
Army is transporting bodies to the graveyards.We need to really think are we doing enough in the US and are people taking the necessary precautions.
Users on social media saw this:
There is no truth to the top picture being related to the coronavirus, as an alert poster pointed out. Rather, it was part of a remembrance project shown in the media, including The Baltimore Sun newspaper. Under the real picture in the Sun, a caption read:
People lay down in a pedestrian zone as part of an art project in remembrance of the 528 victims of the "Katzbach" Nazi concentration camp, in Frankfurt, March 24, 2014. The inmates of the Katzbach concentration camp, a part of the former Adler industrial factory, were forced into a death march to the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau on March 24th 1945. Some 528 victims of Katzbach are buried at Frankfurt's central cemetery. (Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
During the earthquake in central Italy, some buildings had collapsed like houses of cards, although they were supposed to be earthquake-proof. Now it is examined whether construction companies have botched.
The public prosecutor's office in L'Aquila has launched an investigation. It should be checked whether the applicable building regulations were complied with or whether the building was less stable due to greed. "We have an obligation to check whether some buildings were actually made of sand or steel, as several witnesses reported," said chief prosecutor Alfredo Rossini, as the La Repubblica newspaper reported on the Internet on Saturday.
Numerous facilities, including a student residence and a wing of the hospital in the provincial capital LAquila, collapsed after the 6.3 magnitude earthquake on Monday . Engineers and geologists assume that buildings built according to regulations will not collapse in an earthquake of this magnitude.
Firefighters had told RAI television on Friday that some of the pillars of the cleanup had collapsed as if the cement had been mixed with sand during construction.
This is not to downplay the seriousness of the situation in Italy with the coronavirus. Some 59,000 cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Italy - the hardest hit country in terms of cases outside of China - and the country with the most deaths attributed to the virus with at least 5,476 fatalities so far.
Here is a chart from worldometers.info showing the Italian toll as of 10 a.m. ET on March 23, 2020:
In the United States, also as of March 23, there had been some 35,000 cases and at least 458 deaths, according to worldometers.info.
There has been a great deal of false information surrounding COVID-19 on the internet since the outbreak began. We have debunked a good number of them; here are some of our debunks:
- Fact Check: Helicopters Are NOT Spraying Disinfectants To Try To Eradicate Coronavirus
- Fact Check: Tanks NOT Arriving In San Diego, NO Martial Law
- Fact Check: Massachusetts State Police DO Warn Of Possible Scam Related To Coronavirus
- Fact Check: NOT A Photo Of Hundreds Of Coronavirus Dead In Italy
- Fact Check: Coronavirus Cases In U.S. NOT Linked To 5G Rollout
- Fact Check: Joe Biden Did NOT Test Positive For Coronavirus, As African Hoax Website Claims
- Fact Check: Homeland Security Is NOT Preparing To Mobilize The National Guard To Combat Coronavirus
- Fact Check: Italy Has NOT Mandated No Treatment Of All Elderly With Coronavirus
- Fact Check: A Banana A Day Does NOT Keep The Coronavirus Away
- Fact Check: 15 Minutes In Sauna Will NOT Kill The Coronavirus
- Fact Check: A Dog Vaccine Can NOT Be Used To Inoculate People Against Coronavirus
- Fact Check: The CDC Is NOT Warning People The Morel Mushroom Increases Coronavirus Risk By 200%
- Fact Check: Baby Formula NOT Necessarily Being Shipped For Free During Coronavirus Outbreak
- Fact Check: Train Was NOT Marked With "COVID-19" On Its Side
- Fact Check: NOT 10,000 Deaths In Virus Outbreak in Michigan, Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, Missouri, Mississippi
- Fact Check: CDC Did NOT Recommend Men Shave Their Beards To Protect Against Coronavirus
- Fact Check: Florida Man NOT Arrested For Robbery Using Cough As A Weapon
- Fact Check: Lysol Products Can Kill Older Strains Of Coronavirus, But Tests Have NOT Scientifically Proven They Kill Novel Coronavirus
- Fact Check: Hair Weaves And Lace Front Wigs Made In China NOT Likely To Contain Coronavirus
- Fact Check: Scientists Did NOT Discover That Cocaine Kills Coronavirus
- Fact Check: NO Evidence Coronavirus Is Bioweapon Leaked From Wuhan Lab
- Fake News: Six Coronavirus Cases NOT Confirmed In Wichita, Kansas (Or Several Other U.S. Cities)
- Fake News: 20 Million Chinese Did NOT Convert To Islam, And It Was NOT Proven That Coronavirus Epidemic Did Not Afflict Muslims
- Fake News: NO Evidence To Support Claim From Bioweapons Expert Who Says Coronavirus Is Biological Warfare Weapon
- Fake News: Popping Bubble Wrap Does NOT Expose People To Coronavirus
- Fake News: Data From Windy.com Does NOT Show Massive Release Of Sulfur Dioxide Gas Near Wuhan
- Fake News: Latest Research Published By Chinese Scientists Did NOT Say Coronavirus Will Render Most Male Patients Infertile
- Fake News: NO Proof That High-Rise Buildings Have Become Human Incinerators To Combat Coronavirus
- Fake News: Residential Building NOT In Wuhan, NOT Set Ablaze To Control Coronavirus Spread
