Montevideo (AFP)

By the time the Covid-19 pandemic got out of control in Ecuador, it had followed in its wake a trail of false information, ranging from corpses thrown into the sea to proliferation of beach deaths, to proliferation miracle cures.

The first "fake news" arrived in Latin America several weeks before the virus itself.

As of January 25, videos were circulating on social networks concerning the supposed origin of the disease: they were images of a live animal market but they had not been filmed in Wuhan, China, but in 3,000 km away, in Indonesia.

In the hours that followed, many Internet users denounced the creation and the supposed deposit of patents relating to SARS-CoV-2 by "American inventors" and by Bill Gates, again mixed with conspiracy theories.

On February 29, when China recorded nearly 80,000 cases, including 250 deaths, Ecuador, a small Andean country of 17.5 million inhabitants, knew its first patient. A month later, in late March, he registered 2,748 cases, resulting in a collapse of health services.

According to the latest news, Ecuador has counted more than 39,000 cases of Covid-19, including 3,358 deaths (19 / 100,000). Long among the most affected countries in the region, it has since been largely surpassed by Brazil, in particular.

- Scenes of terror -

"Do not buy fish! Coronavirus deaths are thrown into the sea in Ecuador and Peru," said the legend of two videos shared dozens of times on social networks. In reality, one showed the corpses of migrants on a beach in Libya in 2014 and the other, the transfer to a boat of a body that was not thrown into the sea, AFP told AFP. close to the deceased.

"I am a seafood seller. Lies or false videos have affected my sales," an Ecuadorian, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AFP Factuel.

The speed of spread of the virus in Ecuador has led to uncertainty about the destination of the corpses. Rumors of mass graves, with photos of graves dug in vacant lots, were shared frantically. However, among those verified by AFP Factuel, one was taken in Mexico in 2018, the other in Ecuador, but without any link to the pandemic.

"All the attacks were intended to destabilize the government," the Ecuadorian presidency’s communications services told AFP.

In addition to Facebook, the government has identified some 25 groups of nearly 4,000 members each on Telegram and WhatsApp, where fake "audios" are widely circulated. Authorities say they "denied more than 300 publications since March", contacted Facebook and Google, created an official virus information portal and set up a robot for questions about WhatsApp.

- Disinformation peak -

"During the health emergency linked to Covid-19, this disinformation campaign was reinforced," denounced the government.

According to the international factchecking network (IFCN), the organization that refers to the subject, more than 1,000 false content have been verified in 13 Latin American countries, especially in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, since January 24 .

"The two categories of false information that attract the most attention and concern the authorities are political misinformation, with 230 cases, followed by false remedies, with 181 cases," said IFCN.

- Miracle or lethal remedies -

As in other regions, grandmother's remedies supposed to fight the disease have multiplied: drink hot water "every ten minutes", consume garlic, ginger, honey, gargle with salt or bicarbonate, in particular.

Venezuela's own president, Nicolas Maduro, published a recipe of this type in March, which Twitter eliminated.

Health authorities and experts agree: these ingredients do not cure the new coronavirus and even less protect against contamination. Everyone warns: ingesting some of these products in large quantities can be harmful, even fatal.

Thus, injecting seawater, as hundreds of people have done in Ecuador, can lead to decompensation "because the body will expel water from the tissues to bring down the level of salt in the organism, "Juan José Yunis, professor of genetics and immunology at the National University of Colombia, told AFP.

© 2020 AFP