A user reports us to the number Whatsapp 3518091911 a message that would be circulating along with an alleged video about the deaths at the Hospital of Bergamo during an emergency Coronavirus: “Hospital of Bergamo .. my mother or fridd n’cuoll”.
According to another report, the video would have been associated with Brescia: «The video arrived with the caption Brescia».
One of the users indicates an interesting element for the verification, that is one of the few legible signs attached to the black bags. We clearly read a name, that of such a “Zambrano Loor Gilbert”.
A Spanish name, perhaps Latin American. Listening to the audio of the video, one realizes towards the minute 0:20 of a voice in Spanish that says “Hospital general del norte” or “Hospital militar del norte”. At this point we can rule out that it is Bergamo, but let’s move on.
ecuador
Searching online I come across the Ecuadorian journalist Carlos Vera’s sharing of the video on March 31, 2020 on his official Twitter account:
The response tweets refer to a hospital in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Searching through Google with keywords «hospital general GuayaquilI find the name of the probable hospital: “Hospital General del Norte de Guayaquil IESS Los Ceibos”.
I search again and use the name “Los Ceibos” as keywords the tweet @ Mayi21298822 of March 30, 2020, one day before the journalist Vera’s tweet with the video:
At this point we find some correspondences with two photos of the tweet and the video. Below is the frame of the video at the minute 0:37 (left) and the points in common with the photos published online the day before: the lower part of the entrance door and the two doors on the right are the same.
At 0:48 minutes you notice the metal structure in the central area of the room, the same for both the video and the photos shared by @ Mayi21298822.
Are we sure it is the Los Ceibos hospital in Guayaquil? Comparing some photos on Google Maps and the first of the photos shared by @ Mayi21298822 we notice that the graphics of the signs are the same:
Someone was thinking of New York
According to some users it was the Mount Sinai Queens hospital in New York:
Situation in NYC is alarming. Someone said this is Mount Sinai hospital in Astoria NYC.
A user he had contacted a New York hospital via Twitter getting the following answer:
We are deeply disturbed by this video. The portion of the video filming the morgue space is absolutely NOT taken inside our morgue, or in the trailer outside of our hospital – which have been provided to all NYC hospitals. Our morgue is locked and guarded by securitu at all times.
The attribution of the video to New York, as well as today to Bergamo and Brescia, had generated some social confrontation between users who did not entirely agree on its origin.
The “disappearance of the dead”
Among the response tweets to Carlos Vera we find one that reports the screenshot of a Facebook page called Acbir Guayas where the death of a person named “Zambrano Loor Gilbert” is reported:
However, by looking on the Acbir Guayas Facebook page I cannot find the post and the image shown in the screenshot. In the shared image on Twitter we read that the death would have occurred on March 29, 2020, but in the image gallery of the page we do not find any feedback:
One finds feedback only through the Google search for post text (“The asociacion de corredores de bienes raices del guayas, complains of the sensible fallecimiento del señor CBR. Zambrano Loor Gilbert”), which apparently has been removed:
In the official website there was a page of condolences towards the family members, but it is removed and reachable only through Web.Archive.org:
The possibilities are three at this point. Either Acbir noticed the video released online and thought that Mr. Zambrano had died, or the family asked to remove everything because online users were at all costs looking for information that could disturb them. The third is that the Zambrano mentioned by Acbir is probably still alive.
Open.online is working with the CoronaVirusFacts / DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers who are fighting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the alliance here (in English)
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