A message is being circulated on WhatsApp and other social media platforms with claims that the government has planned a five-phase ‘roadmap’ to ease COVID-19 restrictions in India.
“Government’s roadmap to ease Covid-19 restrictions will be set out in 5 phases. These phases will be on 3-week review process, the current phases would commence on the following dates:
Phase 1 – 18th May
Phase 2 – 8th June
Phase 3 – 29th June
Phase 4 – 20th July
Phase 5 – 10th August
If coronavirus cases begin to increase, we will revert to the restrictions set out in the previous stage...” the message read.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above message and found it to be misleading.
In a tweet, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) explicitly confirmed that no such strategy has been released by the Government of India.
Claim: A so-called 3-week, 5-phase “roadmap”, purportedly made
by the Government, to ease #COVID19India restrictions is being circulated on Whatsapp.#PIBFactCheck: #Fake news.This roadmap is not made by our Government, but by that of some other country pic.twitter.com/20duABJP9V— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) May 12, 2020
We then scanned through media reports to check where the message originated from and found a report by Dorset Echo on May 3, 2020.
According to the report, the government of Ireland unveiled a five-phase roadmap to ease the lockdown in their country.
We also found a press release by the Government of Ireland, dated May 1, 2020.
Thus, from the above information, we can conclude that the plan was not revealed by the Indian government. Hence, the message is misleading and false.
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