Altered photos of Canadian and Los Angeles health officials spread online

An array of photos being shared on social media brings together five health officials from different countries — but two of the images have been doctored so that the women in them don’t necessarily look like the picture of health.

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"Canada health minister," reads the description above a doctored photo of Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer of Canada. Tam isn’t the health minister — that title belongs to Patty Hajdu. And a reverse image search of the photo led us to what looks like the original. In the altered version, her eyes are bigger and blacker, her skin tone is changed, and her teeth are exaggerated. 

The second doctored image is of Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. A reverse image search of the photo shows that here, too, her skin tone was changed — giving her a ghostly appearance — and dark circles appear around her eyes in a way that doesn’t reflect what she actually looked like when the picture was taken. 

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on October 26, 2024 in a Threads post

Four Florida counties had “zero results” Oct. 26, and “something underhanded might be happening.”

We rate claims that these photos are authentic and unaltered False.