Does this image show hundreds of thousands protesting in Vienna against COVID-19 restrictions?

It comes as Austria goes into a total lockdown & mandates the vaccine for everyone from February 2022.

An image purporting to show hundreds of thousands of people protesting against COVID-19 restrictions in Vienna, Austria, has gone viral.

Protests have gone on for days against the tough new rules, which started off as a lockdown for the unvaccinated.

The problem?

It's not from Vienna - or even this century.

The image was actually taken on on March 10, 1991, in Moscow's Manezh Square next to the Kremlin.

Protesters were demanding that Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev give up power - with the crowd estimated at 500,000.

However, that image may not be as real as you might think - The Atlantic reports that the photograph was "discovered to have been manipulated" with "part of the crowd copied and pasted."

Sky News host Rita Panahi was one of many who circulated the false claim - as shown in a screenshot from user 'CamLivesHere' - before deleting it & tweeting a "Take 2" to her more than 276K Twitter followers.

Austria has now imposed a total lockdown for both unvaccinated & vaccinated people as COVID-19 cases continue to rise right across Europe, while also making the jab mandatory for everyone from February 2022.

RATING: FALSE

See something you want fact-checked? Send us a DM on social media OR email us: contact@6newsau.com