A Facebook post with over 2,900 shares as of Sept. 9, 2020, includes a photo which it claims shows thousands of people protesting in London in relation to a COVID-19 conspiracy theory. The image actually shows anti-government protesters in Belarus.

The post ( here ) contains a 3D photo with two images showing crowds. One is correctly labeled as being from Berlin, while the other photo is incorrectly labelled as London. The image also contains the caption: “Millions of them are waking up to the Covid19 hoax and the mainstream media is silent”.

The claim that COVID-19 is a hoax is false. As of Sept. 9, 2020, the World Health Organization reported over 27 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 894,000 deaths ( covid19.who.int/ ).

The photo from Berlin was taken on Aug. 1, 2020, and shows a large crowd near Brandenburg Gate protesting government restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic ( here ). The uploader of the image incorrectly suggests the photos were taken on the weekend of Aug. 29-30.

The second photo, incorrectly labelled as London, is a still from a widely circulated video posted to Twitter by German journalist Paul Ronzheimer ( here ). It was taken on Aug. 23, 2020 on Independence Square, Minsk ( tinyurl.com/y3e65ddq ). It was reshared on Twitter with the incorrect London caption prior to the Facebook post ( here ). The protest had no connection with the COVID-19 pandemic and was related to the disputed Belarussian presidential election results.

VERDICT

False. The COVID-19 pandemic is not a hoax. One of the photographs used in the post is an image showing election-related protests in Minsk, not protests against COVID-19 measures in London.