Muscat: Ever since the World Health Organisation named the coronavirus as Covid-19 and later declared it as a global pandemic, the media across the world have made its coverage a top priority. The scribes, no doubt, have been carefully following every development in the catastrophe with multiple stories and continuous updates since then.
Not ignoring the fact that thousands of health experts are also struggling to present their findings to the public in order to create awareness about the new pathogen.
But what makes difficult for the journalists, rather challenging in the journey to provide accurate information, are the ever-changing and, sometimes, unverified nature of the COVID-19 data and symptoms.
The never-ending developments coupled with perplexing new information, new cases and new advices on the pandemic have aggravated the challenges in preparing the reports.
For example, an information about the pandemic that you get today could be entirely different by the next morning, raising doubts about the authenticity of the source. Another fact is that experts and public health officials do revise their opinions, advice and recommendations continuously.
Still the fact is that there should be free flow of information which is more essential than ever in the current situation, both in making the public aware on the vital measures taken by the authorities to contain the pandemic.
However, one of the serious worries in the outbreak is clearly the constantly growing case numbers.
In a recent webinar hosted by leading international agencies, while discussing about the role of the media in the pandemic, a question was raised as to whether the numbers still matter.
No doubt the numbers are of interest to the public. But sometimes that media is over reacting to the number of cases and deaths. They compete each other for ‘breaking the news.’
So we can go by what WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “This is the time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma.” It is not the numbers that matter more, energizing the people with positive breaking news that can combat the outbreak.
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