Used re­spon­si­bly, so­cial me­dia can be a pow­er­ful tool, not on­ly for shar­ing in­for­ma­tion but al­so keep­ing in touch with friends and fam­i­ly. In re­cent days, how­ev­er, T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced the neg­a­tive side of the on­line world.

Some in­di­vid­u­als with dark agen­das have seized on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to share false in­for­ma­tion with the in­tent of trig­ger­ing pan­ic and con­fu­sion. Since the con­fir­ma­tion of T&T's first case on Thurs­day, some have been tak­ing the time to send out mis­lead­ing posts, false­ly dis­guised as be­ing from the Min­istry of Health and oth­er sources, which serves on­ly to frus­trate ef­forts to keep the dis­ease from spread­ing in our pop­u­la­tion.

The ac­tions of these pur­vey­ors of un­truths have been con­demned by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh who quite cor­rect­ly warned that such ac­tiv­i­ty is worse than coro­n­avirus it­self.

Over the past two days alone, the de­lib­er­ate false­hoods shared via Face­book, In­sta­gram and oth­er plat­forms about the pres­ence of COVID-19 in T&T have not on­ly caused hys­te­ria and con­fu­sion in some seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion but have been mis­lead­ing enough to put lives at risk.

It is not as though there has been a pauci­ty of in­for­ma­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh and tech­nocrats at his min­istry have been very up­front and proac­tive in shar­ing in­for­ma­tion about the dis­ease and mea­sures put in place lo­cal­ly.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, those who for one rea­son or an­oth­er are de­ter­mined to paint a pic­ture of chaos have been spread­ing ma­li­cious lies, con­coct­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about hid­den cas­es and fa­tal­i­ties and even in­dulging in the dan­ger­ous prac­tice of mis­lead­ing cit­i­zens about where and how they can be test­ed and treat­ed.

The truth is that there is still much that is now known about COVID-19, a cure has not been found and there is no vac­cine to pre­vent its spread.

Pro­tec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for vul­ner­a­ble seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion, re­quires re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour from all of us, in­clud­ing prop­er per­son­al hy­giene and sourc­ing in­for­ma­tion on­ly from au­tho­rised sources—in this in­stance the Min­istries of Health and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

While the sit­u­a­tion is caus­ing con­cern, it is im­por­tant to fol­low the ad­vice of the ex­perts, not anony­mous char­ac­ters on so­cial me­dia pre­tend­ing to be med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. In this re­gard, heed the ad­vice of the Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, Dr Michelle Trot­man, who in very clear and sim­ple lan­guage yes­ter­day ass­sured that in most cas­es COVID-19 is a very mild ill­ness.

The fo­cus now must be about lim­it­ing the spread of this coro­n­avirus about which so very lit­tle is known.

At present, there are on­ly two con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19 in this coun­try and both are re­port­ed to be re­spond­ing to treat­ment. In ad­di­tion, con­tact trac­ing is be­ing done to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion does not get out of con­trol.

So­cial me­dia hys­te­ria will put us all at a dis­ad­van­tage. We must all do our part calm­ly and re­spon­si­bly to get past this pub­lic health cri­sis.