In a tense environment due to the coronavirus pandemic, misinformation can spell disaster given how quickly it can spread.
Following a surge in cases of coronavirus in Pakistan, the Prime Minister Office (PMO) issued several directives regarding the disease to deal with misinformation.
One such update revealed that the National Institute of Health (NIH) will maintain a dashboard on its official website to provide real-time updates on the situation.
4) For Live updates on Corona Virus, please visit the live Dashboard maintained on National Institute of Health's website https://t.co/jHmwbNsrr9
— Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) March 12, 2020
For some time, the live dashboard was working as intended and provided the latest updates on Coronavirus. However, the dashboard is now unavailable on the NIH’s website as this Twitter user points out:
This dashboard has now been completely scrubbed from the NIH's website.
*Really* inspires confidence in the government's commitment to transparency and real-time updates about the spread of coronavirus in Pakistan https://t.co/9cABq4f8HH
— Zeb Aslam (@ZebAslam) March 16, 2020
Removal of the coronavirus dashboard from NIH’s website will impede the government’s efforts to fight the pandemic and misinformation at the same time.
The importance of having accurate and government-provided data during the COVID-19 outbreak can be gauged by the fact that a renowned news channel recently misreported the total number of cases of the disease in Pakistan that sparked fears all over the country.
At the time of filing this report, the dashboard is still offline. We’ll keep you posted on further updates on this front.