By Anyar Kuol Anyieth, South-Sudan.

COVID-19 is like a forgotten story in South Sudan despite the fact that the world is preparing to fight the returning muted virus. The country government and citizens show no zeal in observing the key preventive measures to fight the world pandemic.  Public places remain congested with no social distancing and no one care to put on face mask.

In September last year, the government declared that “Coronavirus has come to live with the people”. Government went on to lift the lockdown and ease restrictions placed on social gatherings despite the fact that cases were still rising. This phrase was misunderstood. 

Personal protection such as wearing of Face mask, washing of hands with soap and clean water and observing social distancing become less regarded.  

Disinformation among young people swiftly emerged with different conspiracy theories that distort the reality about COVID-19. Some believe that Coronavirus is a disease that affect only people of white skin color. Others simply dismiss the existence of the virus and call it a scheme by the government to generate more money from the donors. 

Cultural games such as wrestling call the attention of the public on daily basis with no social distance as you can see in the above photo.

This placed many at risk of contracting the virus. The phrase “Coronavirus has come to live with the people” needs media engagement to help the people understand context it should be applied in order to curb the rate at which the virus is touring the country now.

Journalists and Media houses must engage the authorities and citizens on the best course of action to shape the understanding of virus among local citizens. This could only be achieve by engaging experts to explain the scientific origin of Coronavirus in order to change the current preconceived notions.

A repeated lies always become truth in the hearing of masses and this will take years for the media to fight off, counter and debunk those false theories. 

Journalists and Media need to hold to account leaders on what they are doing to protect the citizens. Recent partial lockdown is not implemented and cases continue to surge. We all know that South Sudan is not corruption free and some politicians may use the money meant to fight the virus to solve their families’ problems and make their own investment and leave the masses unprotected. 

The time to act and save many lives is now not tomorrow. We are to educate and inform the civil population about this monster in the house. It has come to live with the people and there is need to do more to live without it.

To effectively counter disinformation and avoid infodemic, there is need for journalists and media houses to use listening tools to understand the range at which the disinformation travel and choose a suitable algorithms in order to win this battle and save many lives who become fond of disinformation.

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This blog entry was created in the RNTC course ‘Producing Media to Counter Disinformation’. You can also sign up for this course! Click here!