No, Famous baby model Anahita Hashemzadeh is not suffering from COVID19

As the deadly COVID19 sweep across every region of the world with over 18,000 deaths the number of misinformation about the pandemic on social media has also intensified. Among such false claims are news about celebrities, world leaders and other influential personalities being infected with the virus had gained lot of attention.

Amid all these, we noticed number of claims in Sri Lanka of a cute girl claimed to be Anahita Hashemzadeh suffering from the disease posted in main 3 languages; Sinhalese, Tamil & English

Source information:

Below is the video post with an emotional background score of a cute girl crying and suffering on a hospital bed with the caption: “Pray for her..🙏🙏😭 World cutest baby girl Anahita Hashemzadeh suffering from corona.”

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Below are 2 other posts in Sinhala and Tamil languages respectively among numerous similar posts claiming the COVID19 had not spared even the cute baby model Anahita Hashemzadeh

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Fact Check

We did a Google Search about Anahita Hashemzadeh and noticed that this cute girl from Iran has been a huge sensation in social media ever since a video of her went viral in 2019. She is famous for her adorable looks and cute smile and has a huge follower base especially on her Instagram account managed by her mother. All the images used to convey above viral messages, claiming she was infected with COIVD19 were available on this account.

Since there were not any news reports in main stream media of this baby model being infected with COVID19 we decided to contact her mother who managed her Instagram account with the viral video claim. Below is her reply to the viral video via WhatsApp

“Hello Anahita fans, 👉♥ Anahita is healthy. The video released is fake news and that person is not Anahita. Someone resembled Anahita Thank you for your concern”

Below video post was posted on her Instagram account on 24^th of March, two days after all the viral claims were initially posted. The post in Persian language, translated to English as “Friends, please don't go out of your house to observe anything, God forbid. I wish anyone who owns a job these days wouldn't work hard for employees and employees, or rent my house for the untimely month, be a little cheerful and have a great heart to see how God compensates for us”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Anahita Hashemzadeh | آناهيتا (@annahiita.hashemzadeh) on Mar 24, 2020 at 4:48am PDT

We noticed a number of such inspirational messages on her social accounts about how everyone should be brave and stand united in these testing times.

Conclusion:

Hence from our investigation it is clear that the viral claims of cute baby model Anahita Hashemzadeh suffering from COVID19 are totally false. Anahita’s mother has confirmed that she is absolutely fine and the girl seen in the video is merely a lookalike.