New Delhi, May 22

The Ministry of Electronics and IT has written to all social media platforms to remove any content that refers to an Indian variant of Sars-Cov2 virus that causes Covid-19, noting that the World Health Organisation has not associated any such variant to India.

“This is false,” the ministry said to platforms in reference to online contents that refer to an Indian variant of the virus that has spread to other countries.

The ministry has said the government through the health ministry clarified on May 12 that there was no such term as the Indian variant and the WHO did not identify any variants by country names. The WHO has clarified the issue after several reports described B1617 strain of the virus as an Indian variant. — TNS