Old and unrelated suicide photos are being shared in the context of COVID-19 outbreak - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 24, 2020
A couple of photos are being shared widely on social media with a claim that they show an Italian man, who has lost his entire family to Coronavirus, committing suicide. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post.
Photos of Italian man committing suicide after he lost his entire family to COVID-19.
Fact: The video was taken in Spain and is found to be in circulation on the internet at least since the last week of December 2019. But, the first COVID-19 death was reported only in the second week of January 2019 in China. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the photos were run through the Yandex Reverse Image Search, a video with similar visuals were found in the search results. The video was uploaded on 27 December 2020 with the title – ‘Man Jumps To His Death From The Top Of Hotel Valencia Center In Spain’. When searched with the hotel name, it can be seen that the hotel is in Spain. As the first COVID-19 death was reported only in the second week of January 2020 in China, it can be concluded that suicide is not related to COVID-19.
Also, the Valencia Police has clarified to ‘MALDITA.ES’ that it was a woman, not man, who committed suicide.
To sum it up, old and unrelated suicide photos are being shared in the context of COVID-19 outbreak.
Did you watch our new video?