5000 Students Didn’t Test Positive After COMEDK Exam
The Claim
Over 5000 students tested positive for COVID-19 after an exam for Karnataka's Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka Under Graduate Entrance Test (COMEDK).
Emerging story
On August 17, 2020, the Supreme Court of India ruled against delaying entrance exams due to the pandemic. Following the ruling, a screenshot of a news article saying that 5000 students tested positive after the COMEDK exam went viral, with many social media users decrying the choice of “exams over lives.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found that the screenshot is fake. It has been manipulated to look like an article from News18 and appears juxtaposed to a legitimate NDTV article about 60 COVID-19 positive students who appeared for an exam. We searched on News18’s site and found that there have been no articles reporting 5000 positive test results. The fake news article was overlaid onto another article by News18 in which they discuss the answer key for COMEDK.
Although forcing students to attend exams during a pandemic seems unsafe, the claim that 5000 students tested positive after attending their COMEDK exam is false.
