India's government has instructed social media companies to remove any content that refers to the "Indian variant" of Covid-19. The IT

Covid: India tells social media firms to remove 'India variant' from content

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2021-05-22 20:30:06

India's government has instructed social media companies to remove any content that refers to the "Indian variant" of Covid-19.

The IT ministry said the World Health Organization (WHO) listed the variant as B.1.617 and any reference to "Indian" was false.

The country has been hit hard by the new variant since late March and is now second only to the US in terms of overall infections, at more than 26 million, according to Johns Hopkins University research.

Covid-related deaths are close to 300,000, behind only the US and Brazil, although some experts believe India's fatalities could be considerably higher.

The instruction to social media companies was carried in a government order from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Friday.

Platforms were asked to "remove all the content that names, refers to, or implies 'Indian variant' of coronavirus from your platform immediately", the Press Trust of India reported.