Busted: 24 students from Cebu City did not die! It’s another satirical article!

A Duterte fan page shared an article about the death of 24 students after they were rushed to the hospital. The admin of the page even expressed his “condolences to all who died.” He also added, “Please investigate.”

According to the article, 24 students from Cebu-based school Concord Technical Institute in Brgy. Basak, San Nicolas, Cebu City were taken to the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) after suffering from heart palpitation, abdominal pain, vomiting, and headache. They were later “confirmed dead” by health facility reports, while the remaining 5 students are still in critical condition.

The article also claimed the students drank bottled coffee. It further claimed that the CCMC even declared a code white alert yesterday, putting the medical staff on standby.

We Googled about that news and other articles popped up about those students in Cebu City who were rushed to the hospital. There are various news articles about the students, with initial reports pointing to 24 students overdosing on the coffee drink. The incident did happen on September 27.

However, the latest report from Sun Star said that there were actually 34 students rushed to CCMC, but that as of September 29, at least 28 of those students were already released from the hospital after they were declared out of danger. The remaining 6 students were still in the hospital for further monitoring and medical tests. The distributor of the coffee drink paid for the students’ medical expenses.

The article shared by the Duterte fan page came from DW-Tv3. Memebuster has already busted a few of its articles, such as North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un commenting about President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and those who opposed it and the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling Duterte brave. These are all fake articles. And take note, South African social rights activist Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is still very much alive, unlike what the site claimed.

The admin of the Duterte fan page commented after several netizens corrected him that nobody died, adding that in his caption, he actually asked everybody to investigate.

However, his caption could also be taken to mean that he did believe in the hoax article, seeing as how he already sent his condolences and his “investigate” comment could be taken to mean conducting an investigation into the death of the students. The netizens even accused the admin of ‘tarnishing’ Duterte’s page.