A video showing people in hospital beds on a street has been viewed thousands of times on Facebook alongside a claim it shows coronavirus patients who were moved outside a hospital in Pakistan because of an overflow of patients.
The post’s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “Look at the plight of corona patients at Central Hospital, Rawalpindi and have mercy on yourself. For God’s sake there is no room in the hospitals of Rawalpindi-Islamabad. In this heat of June look at the condition of patients under the open sky and take precautions.”, The same video was also shared thousands of times alongside a similar claim\xa0on Facebook here, here, here, here, here and here., The claim is\xa0false. The footage in fact shows patients from\xa0a hospital in Lahore on June 13 after a fire broke out., A reverse Google image search with video keyframes extracted with InVID-WeVerify, a digital verification tool, found screenshots from the footage were published on Twitter here.\xa0The tweet was published by\xa0Lahore-based journalist Madiha Abid Ali,\xa0who reported on the fire and debunked the misleading claim., “A day before yesterday fire erupted in the operation theatre of the multi-storey emergency ward building of the Services Hospital Lahore. Few people are circulating the video and relating it with #COVID19 situation. Please beware of #FakeNews #FakeNewsAlert,” the tweet reads., "A Google users image of the Services Hospital Lahore tagged at the location on Google Maps also matches\xa0the building seen in the video shared in the misleading posts.", "Below is a screenshot comparison of a Google users\xa0image of the Services Hospital Lahore (L) and the video in the misleading Facebook post (R) with corresponding features circled in red:", A spokesperson for the Punjab Government’s Rescue 1122 emergency service told AFP that a fire broke out at the hospital on June 13., “The fire started in the rear portion of the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). When smoke started entering the ward, patients were timely evacuated from the building,” Deeba Shahnaz, the service’s chief public information officer, told AFP by phone on June 19, 2020., Shahnaz said the government was\xa0aware that footage from the evacuation was\xa0being shared alongside a claim\xa0about “coronavirus patients at another hospital” and said the claim is “not true.”, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar also said there had been a fire at the hospital on June 13, 2020\xa0in this statement published the same day.\xa0He subsequently ordered an investigation,\xa0calling for\xa0officials to provide medical support\xa0to patients., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This video shows patients who were evacuated from a hospital in Pakistan after a fire broke out | AFP Fact Check