| A nursing home worker, left, receives the first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at a health care center in Seoul, Feb. 26, 2021. AP |
The South Korean government will step up efforts to contain misleading information online about coronavirus vaccines, as the country begun its mass inoculation program last week.
According to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Wednesday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will work together with internet portal sites and social media services to remove coronavirus falsehoods swiftly from their platforms.
Under the plan, the agencies can ask the businesses to review any problematic content according to their internal policies and delete it if necessary.
Popular global social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have already run their own policy guidelines on COVID-19 related misinformation to fight against vaccine lies and rumors.
For their part, police agencies nationwide will run a team of special agents tasked with ferreting out misinformation and monitor falsehoods created and spreading online.
The KCC, which runs a webpage (www.kcc.go.kr/vaccinejebo) dedicated to the issue, said there is a lot of vaccine-related misinformation spreading online, such as claims that vaccines cause dementia or paralysis, that refusing to get vaccinated leads to arrest or that the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine is only 8 percent among people over 65.
The country rolled out its vaccination program last week, starting with health workers and residents at nursing homes and senior care hospitals nationwide.
The government said it will continue working to eradicate falsehoods about vaccines and provide people with correct information to make them feel safe to get vaccinated. (Yonhap)