False posts about 'China health emergency' misuse old Covid photos
- Published on January 13, 2025 at 05:11
- 4 min read
- By Ara Eugenio, Tommy WANG, AFP Philippines
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"CHINA DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY FOLLOWING VIRUS OUTBREAK IN THE COUNTRY," read a Tagalog-language Facebook post shared on January 2.
The post showed a photo of patients with oxygen tanks lined up in a hospital corridor and another of a busy hallway with a patient on a stretcher.
It claimed the state of emergency was prompted by a rapid spread of four viral infections -- Influenza A, Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV), Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Covid-19, in in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, causing medicine shortages and packed crematoriums.
It said international health authorities like the World Health Organization have "expressed readiness" to control the outbreak and cited an alleged call for global preparedness to prevent another pandemic.
Some Facebook users appeared to believe the post genuinely showed a state of emergency in China.
"A new season of lockdowns is waving," one user commented.
Another wrote: "They shouldn't be allowed to enter the Philippines anymore."
The photos spread on Facebook pages in the Philippines with tens of thousands of followers.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention's latest sentinel surveillance report from January 9, 2025 showed multiple viruses circulating in the country, including influenza, hMPV, rhinovirus and Mycoplasma pneumonia (archived link).
The spread of acute respiratory infectious diseases continued to be on the rise, while seasonal flu was still present and other viruses such as coronavirus were reported to be at a low epidemic level.
But there have been no official reports of a state of emergency declared in China over the spread of these known viruses.
The Philippine Department of Health also refuted rumours of an "alleged international health concern", saying it was not supported by reliable sources.
"There is no confirmation from either the cited country or the World Health Organization (WHO)," it wrote on Facebook on January 3 (archived link).
Past Covid surge
A reverse image search on Google found the first photo shared on Facebook was published by Reuters news agency on January 4, 2023 in an article about surging Covid infections in Shanghai (archived link).
The photo was captioned: "Patients lie on beds in a hallway in the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Staff."
At that time, a wave of Covid-19 cases was raging through the Chinese megacity and elsewhere in the country, after Beijing swiftly dismantled key pillars of its zero-Covid policy, eliminating snap lockdowns, mass testing and state quarantines within days (archived link).
The photo was picked up in similar reports, including by French newspaper Le Monde and Philippine media organisation Rappler (archived here and here).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo used in the false post (left) and in Reuters' article (right):
The second image shared on Facebook is in fact an AFP photo taken in 2022 by photographer Noel Celis (archived link).
"This picture shows a Covid-19 patient on a stretcher in the emergency ward of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University in China's southwestern city of Chongqing on December 22, 2022," reads the photo caption of the image published in AFP's archives.
One crematorium in the city of 30 million told AFP back then they had run out of space to keep bodies, straining to deal with an influx of deaths as the country battled soaring coronavirus cases (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo used in the false post (left) and in AFP's archives (right):
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