Infodemic within a Pandemic - The Case of COVID-19 and Urban India

Abstract

Context: Information related to COVID-19 has been copiously accessible by almost everyone through various modes since its emergence in December 2019 with possible divergence in beliefs about the sources of infection and the actions to take to reduce morbidities and mortality, giving rise to the COVID-19 infodemic. Aim: (i) to report on the variability in the comprehension of COVID-19 related mortality information (ii) to document how varied the sources of information that a population relies on are (iii) to understand the motivation behind implementation of social distancing norms amongst this population (iv) to suggest methods to reduce the burden of an infodemic within a pandemic by creating herd immunity against misinform ants. Settings and Design: An online survey was conducted amongst urban educated individuals on 19 April 2020. Methods and Materials: The survey was conducted using Google forms and sent via WhatsApp chat messages to 949 individuals belonging to various chat groups, of whom 96 replied voluntarily. Results: Even though most (92.71%) of the participants derived their information from 'trustworthy' sources, there was a large amount of variation in their interpretation of that data. Conclusion: We demonstrated that educated urban professionals have been negatively affected by the infodemic around the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest broad guidelines for future information flow to be better handled through programmes such as "information vaccination" and "modified herd immunity" so that an infodemic is controlled and leads to better outcomes from any epidemic.