A patient who had been hospitalised for Coronavirus at the Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada reportedly threw himself from a 7th-storey window. The 77-year-old man was said to be recovering and his condition was not described as serious.

Forensic police were called to the hospital to examine the area where the body had landed and take samples, pending the arrival of the coroner, whose permission was needed to remove the body of the deceased.

This story was first picked up by El Independiente de Granada and then Ideal ran with the story after having the circumstances confirmed by the police; a man fell from a high window at the hospital and met his death. That it was suicide can only be reported as alleged until the police investigation reaches a conclusion.

The reason for this caution was that there had been a viral video circulating on social media at the beginning of the week claiming that a man had thrown himself from a hotel roof terrace in Valencia (Hotel Valencia Center) out of desperation because of quarantine as he was suffering from Covid-19.

It turned out that in this case to be hoax as the video was from the 24th of December, 2019, before cases of Covid-19 in China had become known in Europe. The original video reported that the man had been arrested for domestic violence and had taken his own life. Even that was a lie because the person who jumped was a woman and had nothing to do with domestic violence.

So, the video was a hoax back at Christmas and its appearance this March was a rehashed version to fit with the present Coronavirus crisis.

Editorial comment: there are so many hoaxes circulating on social media that even mainstream press and TV have been taken in at times, so verifying the authenticity by the Ideal newspaper was more than necessary.

(News: Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)