Hoax uses Daily Pilot’s name to falsely claim coronavirus has hit Newport-Mesa school district

A mockup appearing to be the Daily Pilot website announcing that the deadly coronavirus had reached into the Newport-Mesa Unified School District is a hoax.

Neither the Pilot nor City News Service — a regional wire service that the mockup credited with writing the article — published the story, which was dated Jan. 28 and headlined “Deadly virus has made way into NMUSD school district. Officals [sic] starting to fear outbreak.”

The article, peppered with misspellings, is shown in what looks like a screenshot of dailypilot.com.

The Newport-Mesa school district denied the story’s claim that a student at Corona del Mar High School had been hospitalized “after many suspisions [sic] of illness, later found to be linked with Coronavirus.”

District spokeswoman Annette Franco shared the image with the Daily Pilot. She said Newport-Mesa doesn’t know the false article’s origins, and it was unclear how widely it had been circulated or through what means.

“We have no reason to believe that any of our students or members of the Newport-Mesa community have been impacted by the coronavirus,” the district wrote in a message sent Wednesday to the Corona del Mar Middle and High School community in response to the fake article. “We have no reported cases that link any of our students or school community to the coronavirus.”

The district has posted general educational information on the new strain of the virus known as 2019-nCoV, which causes flu-like symptoms and has killed more than 100 people in China. The outbreak originated in late December in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that five patients in four states had tested positive for coronavirus and an additional 92 cases were under investigation. Two of the confirmed patients are in California — one in Los Angeles County and the other in Orange County.

The Orange County Health Care Agency said the local patient is a man in his 50s who is a nonresident “traveler from Wuhan.” The man, whose diagnosis was confirmed Saturday, was reported to be in isolation in good condition at an unidentified hospital.

OC Health said there is no evidence that person-to-person transmission has occurred in Orange County and said the risk of infection is believed to be low.

The hoax uses the same fonts and nameplate and a layout similar to the real Daily Pilot website.

“It was a fake story and a fake website, and I doubt many people fell for it. I haven’t heard that anyone thought it was real,” said Daily Pilot City Editor Rob Vardon. “Still, it’s troubling that somebody tried to use our name to fool people.”

The Pilot regularly uses genuine City News Service content.

City News Service President Douglas Faigin disavowed the article.

“It’s not ours. It’s appalling — and just another example of why people should be very careful about believing what they see on the internet and use their critical thinking skills before accepting something as the truth,” he said.

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