By Sola Ogundipe
Irked by the series of criticisms and negative attention over the handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Indian government has banned the use of the terminology “Indian variant of COVID-19” and instructed the removal of such content from social media.
An order by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology weekend instructed social media platforms to remove all the content that names refer to, or implies Indian variant of coronavirus immediately.
The statement by the IT ministry pointed out that the variant that was first discovered in India is listed by the World Health Organisation, WHO, as the B.1.617 variant, and observed that any reference to “Indian” was false.
The statement read: “It has come to our knowledge that a false statement is being circulated online which implies that an ‘Indian variant’ of coronavirus is spreading across the countries.
“This is completely false,” the statement said. affirmed that the…
Source: Vanguard Newspaper
