Coronavirus: Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint republishes five-days old article claiming that Singapore has recorded zero Covid-19 deaths

ThePrint Editor Shekhar Gupta (image digitally edited)

The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak that originated in China has spread to almost all parts of the world including Singapore. Singapore’s health ministry on Monday (March 23) reported 54 new cases of the Covid-19 outbreak, taking the total count to 509, with two fatalities.

The Conversation, a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories written by academics and researchers, publishes an article on March 18, titled: ‘Why Singapore’s coronavirus response worked – and what we can all learn’, which claimed that as on the date that report was published Singapore had recorded zero deaths. Which stood true as Singapore reported its first two confirmed deaths related to the COVID-19 outbreak on March 21 (Saturday).

Screenshot of the article published by The Conversation on March 18

This article by The Conversation was picked up by Shekhar Gupta’s propaganda website ThePrint and republished verbatim on March 23 with a different headline: ‘Why Singapore isn’t in a coronavirus lockdown — as told by a doctor of the country’.

Screenshot of the report published by ThePrint on March 23

While republishing the article, ThePrint probably forgot to recheck the latest statistics. Incidentally, Singapore reported both the deaths on March 21 and Shekhar Gupta propaganda portal foolishly, without checking the latest data, maintained in its report that Singapore reported zero Coronavirus deaths. There were no editorial remarks that would reflect that two days before ThePrint republished the 18 March report, two people in Singapore have lost their lives.

As if this blunder was not enough that ThePrint chief and Editors Guild of India’s head Shekhar Gupta, took to Twitter to share the article with captioning it as: “Singapore has had 266 COVID cases with zero deaths, its infection rate is much slower than the rest of the world… And it hasn’t had a lock-down… This is how we did it, writes Dale Fisher, Chair, Infection Control, National University of Singapore”.

Shekhar Gupta’s Tweet dated March 23, 2020

Earlier in the day, we reported how Shekhar Gupta and other honorary members of the leftist brigade, who cannot resist their temptation when it comes to defaming Modi, had retweeted a tweet from a fake account, thereby spreading misinformation to millions amidst the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.

OpIndia Staff: Staff reporter at OpIndia