Health officials have warned members of the public not to spread misinformation amid widespread and disputed rumors about the health of the royal family.
The COVID-19 task force last acknowledged the existence of “fake news” that has been circulating online and denied that it was true. It directly referenced a rumor that Queen Suthida had contracted COVID-19, singling it out as untrue.
“In terms of a news story that has been going viral on social media, we checked the news and found that it is not true. Please do not believe it or share it with others,” the task force’s information center said in the post.
Rumors and speculation about His Majesty’s health spread widely since Thursday, leading many to believe, without evidence, that he had been hospitalized with serious COVID-19 symptoms. Several million tweets have used a hashtag referencing the rumors.
The Bureau of the Royal Household has not commented on the rumors, though an established source of royal news also disputed them.
“According to a royal correspondent, the king has previously had a respiratory problem, as he is sometimes hard to breathe, but nothing is in serious mode and is not even related to the virus,” the Royal World Thailand page wrote in English on Facebook. The page has routinely published credible royal news in its five-year history and is followed by nearly half a million readers.
It added: “Royal World Thailand has contacted a staff of the King’s Royal Office, saying about the news spreading at the moment: ‘Everything’s still fine.’”
Insulting the monarch is a serious crime punishable by long prison sentences, and “spreading misinformation” can be prosecuted under the Computer Crime Act.
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