As India’s pandemic continues, in some areas the healthcare system is close to collapse

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In Mumbai’s Sion hospital emergency ward there are two people to a bed. Patients, many with coronavirus symptoms and strapped two to a single oxygen tank, were captured lying almost on top of each other, top-to-toe on shared stretchers or just lying on the floor, in footage shared on social media in India this week.

Mumbai, a city of more than 20 million people, is weeks into the pandemic, but with new cases showing no sign of slowing down the city’s already weak healthcare system appears to be on the brink of collapse. State hospitals such as Sion, overcrowded in normal times, are overrun. With frontline doctors and nurses falling sick with the virus in their droves, it is also leading to a shortage of medical staff.

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HONG KONG (AFP) – False alerts about a man shot dead at a coronavirus checkpoint, old footage of a supermarket stampede in reports of panic buying, and a 2015 video of a police raid on a brothel recirculated with a misleading claim.

A deluge of online misinformation and hoaxes during the coronavirus crisis is stoking fear and confusion across Asia, where violators of lockdown rules can face jail and hefty fines in some countries.

AFP has produced more than 150 lockdown-related misinformation reports across the region since February, when governments beyond China began introducing restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19.

The hoaxes are created by a wide array of people with varying motives – from those looking to discredit governments and deepen religious divides, to pranksters – and then shared widely as fact.

In April, a hoax was shared on Facebook in the Philippines post its lockdown suggesting a motorcyclist had been shot dead for ignoring a virus checkpoint.

In fact, the footage – which was viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts – was of a police training drill.

Some users were outraged, and questioned the purportedly fatal use of force by the police, which has long been accused of human rights abuses and led President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial war on drugs.

But others suggested the man had been “hard-headed” and was justly punished for stubbornly ignoring the checkpoint, echoing the types of sentiments from Duterte’s supporters who have cheered on the thousands of drug war deaths.

Other misinformation circulated in the Philippines has included doctored advisories about lockdown extensions and false posts about anti-government protesters flouting gathering bans.

Elsewhere in Asia, a Facebook post in Thailand included a video purporting to show panicked buyers scrambling for goods in Malaysia after it implemented a strict lockdown.

Thai Facebook users – who viewed the video hundreds of thousands of times – shared it with comments expressing worry there would be similar scenes in Thailand.

The clip, in fact, showed shoppers in Brazil on Black Friday, an annual day of sales, in November 2019.

“(Misinformation) has fuelled a lot of uncertainty and anxiety among people,” said Yvonne Chua, an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines.

The online mayhem has taken a greater hold when governments have communicated poorly, according to Axel Bruns, a media professor at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

“It seems to me the more effective government communication has been about lockdowns, but really about all aspects of their coronavirus response, the less foothold there has been for mis- and disinformation,” Bruns said.

In Thailand, where movement restrictions were imposed in March, anxiety spread over misleading messages saying people who did not wear face masks in public would be fined 200 Thai baht (S$8.50).

The misinformation quickly spread on Facebook, Twitter and the messaging app Line, and Thai police were forced to refute the claim in a press conference.

But less than a month later, however, some provinces did introduce much harsher fines for those who failed to wear face masks, further fuelling confusion.

In Pakistan, where coronavirus restrictions were recently relaxed, one hoax video suggested shoppers had attempted to flee a store after police discovered it had ignored the lockdown.

But that video was actually of a police raid on a brothel in 2015.

Passengers arrive at the railway station as authorities resume the train operations, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on May 20, 2020. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

Many Pakistani users pointed out that the clip was old, but not before it was viewed tens of thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp.

In neighbouring India, misinformation has also been rife after a nationwide lockdown was imposed in March.

Prominent misleading posts have included political smears, rumours about extreme lockdown measures and misinformation intended to stoke religious tensions.

One graphic video of an axe attack was viewed tens of thousands of times in false posts on Facebook and Twitter, with claims it showed Islamist extremists killing a Hindu man during the lockdown.

In reality, the video showed an attack in Pakistan.

While some social media users identified the clip as from abroad, others appeared misled by it, suggesting it was evidence that India needed “army rule”.

Bruns said the deluge of misinformation was partly due to governments’ inabilities to adequately reassure their citizens.

“The circulation of misinformation is increased during such times because people are desperately looking for answers to their questions about what’s happening, why, and what they can do to protect themselves,” said Bruns.

“And if they can’t find enough satisfactory answers from official sources, they’ll start to look elsewhere.”

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MANILA (PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – Tipped off about medical wastes clogging the drainage of a Makati building, police on Tuesday (May 26) swooped down on another underground and unlicensed medical facility apparently being used to treat Chinese patients afflicted with Covid-19.

As in a similar raid on an underground hospital in Parañaque last month, police found treatment beds, syringes, machines, and equipment for coronavirus testing, and some Chinese nationals awaiting treatment.

In both instances, the medical facilities had no business permit, and the Chinese doctors no license to practice medicine in the country.

Authorities also discovered a pharmacy inside the Parañaque establishment where unregistered medicines labelled in Chinese characters were found.

Some of the medicines were for sexually transmitted diseases, leading the police to surmise that the medication could possibly be part of a sex trafficking operation, with workers from nearby Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) as main clients.

Soon after, two Chinese citizens were arrested in Cavite after a raid on a warehouse netted some P10 million ($279, 519) worth of Chinese medicine not registered with the Food and Drug Administration.

Police said they were looking into the possibility that the warehouse supplied the medications found at the Parañaque underground hospital.

But the biggest police haul was last week’s discovery of a secret Chinese clinic at the Fontana Leisure Park in Clark, Pampanga. The seven-bed clandestine facility was supposedly put up to exclusively treat Chinese workers suffering from Covid-19.

A Fontana official later issued a statement denying the company’s involvement in the clinic. But the more salient disclosure in the letter was that the Chinese nationals operating the facility were “released on the same day of their arrest on May 19, with no charges filed against them.”

Unbelievable. But first – if illegal Chinese clinics are being discovered one after the other, just how many more are operating clandestinely out there?

And if these facilities have proliferated to this degree, doesn’t that indicate the presence of a large number of Chinese nationals in the country who are sick of the virus and, perhaps distrustful of availing themselves of treatment in a regular hospital where their case would be recorded, would rather check into an illegal clinic set up by their compatriots?

Who are these Chinese nationals, and which companies are they connected with that would warrant their presence in the country at this time?

A more troubling question involves Philippine health officials: Why has it been so easy to test the Chinese nationals found in the resort hospital using the country’s limited test kits and health workers – when the health department has been dragging its feet in testing the rest of us?

Until they were discovered, the unsanctioned medical facilities also meant that infected Chinese patients were not being reported to health authorities and, instead of being quarantined to contain the virus, could easily be spreading the disease.

In another recent incident at the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), the Pogo firm Ekxinum, Inc. refused entry to the SBMA’s inspection team, which had been sent to conduct inspections to check the company’s compliance with quarantine protocols and to see if it had ceased operations as ordered by the government amid the pandemic.

Such impunity. Where do these foreign nationals get off brazenly flouting our laws?

The answer is in that revealing Fontana letter: The erring Chinese nationals were “released on the same day of their arrest on May 19, with no charges filed against them.”

Contrast that stunning leniency with the high price ordinary Filipinos have to pay for the slightest misdemeanour.

Fish vendor Joseph Jimeda, for instance, was arrested and detained for 12 days – two days more than the penalty for his offense – for “simple disobedience” to quarantine rules in Navotas.

These underground, dangerously unregulated hospitals and the brash Chinese nationals behind them are, however, only part of a bigger headache – the Pogo industry.

On May 14, police raided an unregistered Pogo firm in Las Piñas; 265 Chinese workers were rounded up.

Add that criminal enterprise to the social ills that have come to be associated with the growth of the sector, from kidnapping and murder to prostitution and human trafficking.

The aboveboard Pogo companies, on the other hand? None of them can yet resume operations, according to Internal Revenue Deputy Commissioner and Pogo task force head Arnel S.D. Guballa, because “They are still in the process of complying with the requirements, including payments.”

In other words, as of this time, not one of the 60 or so licensed Pogos (or any of their service providers, per the Bureau of Internal Revenue) has fully settled their tax obligations.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a member of The Straits Times media partner Asia News Network, an alliance of 24 news media organisations.

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India is the latest country whose coronavirus death toll has topped the number of lives lost in China, where cases of Covid-19 were first reported, as hotspots shift to developing countries ill-equipped to contain its spread.The South Asian nation’s death toll hit 4,695 on Thursday, climbing past the 4,638 fatalities from Covid-19 in China. The nation of 1.3 billion people now has the highest number of fatalities in Asia, despite the largest lockdown in the world.The country’s death toll…