News articles didn’t claim the same boy died of Covid-19 in three different countries

A widely shared tweet claims that the same child was reported to have died of Covid-19 in three different countries.

It says: “THE SAME CHILD DIES IN 3 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES FROM COVID. — U.K, PORTUGAL AND BELGIUM. — THIS IS HOW THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WORKS IN THE WORLD”.

The tweet, which has also been shared on Facebook, includes images of three reports, each showing the picture of the same child, but with details about a different child’s death from Covid-19.

The picture is that of a boy named Vitor Godinho, who according to MailOnline sadly died of Covid-19 on Sunday, 29 March 2020, in a hospital near his home in Portugal. MailOnline’s article is one of those screenshotted in the tweet.

The second article, published by the Daily Express, reported on the death of a 12-year-old girl in Belgium from Covid-19. It does feature Vitor’s image, in a section detailing the deaths of other children from Covid-19, but does not claim he was the child who died in Belgium.

The third screenshot features extracts from a Daily Record article about the death of a 13-year-old boy in Brixton, London from the disease, published on 31 March 2020. This article does not feature Vitor’s image.

The screenshot also includes a sentence not in the article, recommending that readers “start a prayer chain”, suggesting it may come from another web page or social media account which has taken extracts from the Daily Record. Full Fact can find no trace of this web page.

We can’t eliminate the possibility a third party website did this, but we can say there is no evidence the Daily Record or, more widely, the “media” did so.

Image courtesy of Fusion Medical Animation