Fact Check: Did Germany handed over China a £130 billion bill over coronavirus damage?

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Fact Check: Did Germany handed over China a £130 billion bill over coronavirus damage?
Fact Check: Did Germany handed over China a £130 billion bill over coronavirus damage?

New Delhi : A news report by Express allegedly claiming that Germany has handed over China a £130 billion bill over coronavirus damage has gone viral on social media; with people supporting and rejecting the call mixed reactions are being massively shared. 

Social media users, while sharing the article, have demanded that since Angela Merkel’s Germany has sent China an invoice of £130 billion for coronavirus damages, India should do the same and send Beijing an invoice of £300 billion.

Click HERE to see the archived version of the post 

News Heads team went into the details of the report and found that the headline on the article is misleading and aimed at getting the story clicked.

The German government has not issued any such bill to China. It was actually a tabloid newspaper in Germany called “Bild” which issued a mock bill to China after assessing damages to the country’s economy due to COVID-19. It claimed that China owns Germany around 149 billion (£130 billion) for coronavirus damages.

While most of the people just read the headlines and started sharing their reactions on social media, making it a viral post.


In fact, in the first article of the Express, it is mentioned that the 'Bild' has put together a £130 billion invoice that Beijing “owes” Berlin, but the headline has been designed in a way that it turns out to be misleading with people getting an impression that a bill has been sent to China.

The inside headline of the article was later changed with a clarification that it was not the German government that estimated the bill for coronavirus damages (that should be paid by China), but rather the leading German news publication “Bild”.

Till date, Germany has reported 1.5 lakh coronavirus cases and 5000 deaths. 95,000 people have recovered from the infection.