Fact Check: Is video of rats jumping from truck to spread Hantavirus real?
WASHINGTON, DC: Amid the panic surrounding the outbreak of Hantavirus is a luxury cruise ship, a video began circulating on social media platforms, claiming to show rats jumping out of a moving truck, shared with the claim that the virus is being spread intentionally, sparking speculations.
Let us analyse the viral video and fact-check the claim.
Claim: Viral video shows rats spreading Hantavirus
The viral video shows a semi-truck driving down a highway, with dozens of giant rats seen pouring onto the road out of the rear of the trailer, which has a hole cut into it, and moving in a single-file line at rapid speed.
An X post that shared the video was accompanied by a caption stating, “Dashcam catches dozens of RATS exploding out of a hole in a semi-trailer at highway speed like a horror movie. Deliberate release? Population control? Or something worse... hantavirus carriers being dropped into cities? WHO literally warned about this."
The clip has also been shared on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.
Fact Check: The video is generated using AI
The video, however, is fake and is generated using Artificial Intelligence. An analysis of the clip using an AI detection tool called Hive Moderation found that the video was likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content and assessed that it stemmed from OpenAI's prompt-to-video generator Sora 2.
Further analysis of keyframes from the video revealed visual inconsistencies that are common in AI-generated videos, such as the rats' large size, on par with the truck's wheels, and the robotic nature of their jumps out of the truck in a single-file line, pointing to the inauthenticity of the images.
Similarly, some freeze frames show distortions, including rats with two tails or abnormally long tails and legs.
A reverse image search for the video found that the clip was first uploaded on TikTok on March 11by a self-described digital creator whose page shares mostly satirical and synthetic imagery.
The original caption of the video does not make any mention of Hantavirus.
WHO assures outbreak is not the start of a pandemic
Following the outbreak, President Donald Trump and the World Health Organisation (WHO) addressed the fears, stating, ‘This is not the start of a COVID pandemic.’
According to WHO officials, the wider public-health risk remains low, and they stressed that this is not SARS-CoV-2. American infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said the situation is “not the start of a COVID pandemic,” calling it an outbreak in a confined ship setting.
