COVID-19: Research community counters misinformation with “CovidGyan”

NEW DELHI: India’s top research organisations have formed a unique portal to provide reliable facts on COVID-19 to overcome the “information overload” on the epidemic.

Bangalore Life Science Cluster, or BLiSC, a group of research institutions, said in a statement that the website CovidGyan ( https://covid-gyan.in ) was created to filter out misinformation.

The initiative is the “brainchild” of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC).

“The torrent of information generated and spread from all corners of the world has created information overload. It is a challenge to comprehend reliable information while filtering out misinformation,” the statement said.

“A multi-institutional, multi-lingual science communication initiative, called CovidGyan, has been created to deal with just this challenge,” the statement added.

Why CovidGyan matters

Rajesh Gopakumar, director of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, who is coordinating the initiative, said the mandate is to, “create, curate and communicate scientifically credible and authentic COVID-19 related content and resources.”

Satyajit Mayor, director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) said: “It is especially important that we utilise our deep scientific understanding of the biological world to provide a more holistic perspective on the situation we find ourselves in, and seek appropriate solutions for the resolution of this crisis.”

“Similar to climate change, ignoring science can quickly intensify problems to a global scale. CovidGyan is an attempt to build this with the coordinated effort of scientists across India in several Indian languages,” added Arnab Bhattacharya, who leads the TIFR Mumbai science communication initiative Chai and Why?

Prof. K. Subramaniam, Centre Director of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) in Mumbai said that the diverse capabilities of the partner institutions can be combined to bring authentic information to the public. The partner institutions of CovidGyan have capabilities in scientific research, science communication, and science education, he said.

What it does

CovidGyan will provide authentic and reliable sources of information about various aspects of COVID-19.
The website hosts short informative videos, posters and infographics, mythbusters, FAQs and articles. It will be available in multiple Indian languages.

The videos in 12 languages are available at https://covid-gyan.in/videos

The website will cater to the general public as well as those who are scientifically curious about COVID-19. Users can find infographics that address rumours and provide factual data.

CovidGyan will soon be made available in as many Indian languages as possible to reach a wide audience, the statement said.

The partners of CovidGyan are: Vigyan Prasar, IndiaBioscience, and the Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC, which comprises InStem and C-CAMP, in addition to NCBS-TIFR)

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• Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak: Latest Updates

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