Covid vaccination drive in India is underway. As one of the largest vaccination drives continues, it becomes crucial to take proactive steps to provide timely, accurate, and science-based information about the vaccines. This becomes crucial as misinformation and disinformation about the vaccine can undermine its overall efficacy.
Google Search is one such crucial platform that can help against spreading lies about the vaccine. The company says that it is working with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to disseminate science-based narrative around vaccination drive.
The search engine has rolled out knowledge panels in Google Search for queries related to the Covid vaccine. These panels offer answers to commonly asked questions like details on the two vaccines, effectiveness, safety, distribution, side effects, and more at one place.
Information on these panels is available in eight Indian languages -Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Hindi along with English. Google says that this information is sourced from MoHFW, and displays real-time statistics around vaccinations completed.
Similar panels also appear on Google’s video platform YouTube when one searches for Covid-related queries. YouTube homepage also features links to key vaccine resources on the MoHFW website. It also has FAQ videos from the MoHFW..
Google Search page also provides links to the MoHFW website for additional local resources. Google has also optimised its website for mobile users. It has reduced the page load times to offer quick information.
Google also releases regular Google Trends reports on COVID vaccine queries to enable government officials take critical decisions during these vaccination rollouts.