As COVID-19 cases surge across the country with Maharashtra recording the highest number of cases, the state government has been forced to impose strict restrictions to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Amidst this, a notice allegedly issued by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is doing the rounds on social media. This purported notice claims that a new variant of the coronavirus, which cannot be detected, is affecting small children and youngsters till the age of 30.
Here’s the link to the above post.
More posts can be seen here, here, here and here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the post and found the claim to be false.
We ran a keyword search to see if this has been reported by any credible media organisation and found a report by The Times of India dated April 1, 2021, stating that BMC has issued a warning against the fake letter doing rounds on social media.
We then scanned through the website and social media account of BMC and found a tweet dated March 31, 2021, where they have clarified that the notice is fake.
“The following image making rounds on social media is fake and we urge citizens to not circulate it any further. We request Mumbaikars to continue following all COVID-prevention norms and help the city beat the virus. #FakeNewsAlert,” the tweet read.
We then proceeded to check if the claims made in the notice are correct or not. We found multiple reports stating that as for the trend so far, it has been noticed that higher number of children and youth are getting affected by the virus in the ‘second’ wave as compared to the ‘first wave’.
According to a report by India.com, Delhi AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria in an interview said that the second wave of COVID-19 is infecting more kids.
The report also mentioned that in the interview Dr Randeep Guleria said with schools opening after almost a year, children are talking to each other and there is no COVID-appropriate behaviour and restrictions are not being followed. Hence they are contracting the virus. They have been protected so far and therefore kids do not have anti-bodies.
According to a report by CNN, a similar trend has been noticed in the US too.
The article also talks about how not being vaccinated will cause a problem for the youth as they are more susceptible to contract the virus.
However, we found that BMC has not issued any notice in this connection. Hence, we can say that the purported notice is fake.
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