Govt Asks Social Media Platforms To Take Down Any Content Which Names Or Implies “Indian Variant” Of Coronavirus: Report

In a major development, the government has written to all the social media platforms asking them to take down any content which either names or implies to an “Indian variant” of the coronavirus, reports Economic Times.

Asserting that there was no such variant of the Covid-causing SAR-CoV-2 virus, the Government in the letter stated that "there is no such variant of COVID-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO)". It added that the WHO has not associated the term “Indian Variant” with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports.

It should be noted that on 11 May, the WHO had said that it was classifying the coronavirus variant B.1.617 as a variant of global concern. The said variant had been first identified in India.

Thereafter, a day later, the government too had issued a statement slamming media reports which were using the term “Indian variant” without any basis as the WHO identified the said variant as B.1.617.

The letter from the government to the social media platforms was written by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (MeitY).