CBS Airs Hospital Footage During Report on How Coronavirus Is Overwhelming NYC – Just One Problem

CBS aired coronavirus coverage footage Wednesday that appeared to be taken from a New York hospital, but was in fact shot inside an Italian hospital.

A Sky News video aired March 19 showed the impact of the coronavirus on Italy’s Bergamo hospital, “one of the hardest hit by this emergency,” according to Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Malo.

Footage from Bergamo hospital was used in a “CBS This Morning” report last week on the New York healthcare system’s struggles in dealing with the spread of coronavirus.

As footage from the Italian hospital played during the report, a CBS chyron read: “New York now accounts for more than half of new US cases.”

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“CBS This Morning” gave viewers no indication that the hospital they were seeing was not located in New York.

Twitter user JodiSymmo noted the discrepancy on Monday, also calling attention to how other news outlets had misidentified the footage.

White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said Thursday the media is giving the false impression that hospitals are overwhelmed.

“Models are models,” she said while speaking at a White House press briefing. “When people start talking about 20 percent of a population getting infected, it’s very scary, but we don’t have data that matches that based on our experience.”

Birx urged the media not to imply that when Americans “need a hospital bed, it’s not going to be there, or a ventilator, it’s not going to be there.

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“We don’t have evidence of that,” she said.

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