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Published 12:55 IST, May 14th 2020

Fact Check: Has Indian Government shared '5-phase roadmap' to ease COVID-19 lockdown?

Fact Check: There has been a message circulating around that the Indian government has brought forward a five-phase roadmap to ease the COVID-19 restrictions.

Reported by: Yashika Sharma
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Lockdown 3.0 in India is currently nearing its end and hence there has been a lot of hubbub as to what would happen after the lockdown ends. The Prime Minister of India, PM Narendra Modi, informed that there will be a Lockdown 4.0 as well, though it would be different and details would be out by May 18. Since then, there have been a lot of messages and WhatsApp forwards that claim that the government has brought forward a roadmap to ease restrictions for COVID-19 - that it is set for 5 phases, and each phase has a 3-week review process.

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Origin:

The message started circulating on WhatsApp. The message claims that the Government has a roadmap to ease restrictions that will set out in 5 phases. It claims that the phases are a three-week review process, and then the dates are given. At the end of the message, it is said that if the coronavirus will increase, the government will revert to the old restrictions.

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The same message was shared on other social media portals as well. Many people took to Twitter to share the same message and inform the others of the same. Here are some of the tweets that have the same message:

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THE TRUTH:

PIB Fact Check shared a picture of the same Whatsapp Forward on their Twitter account and released that it is fake and misleading information. The Fact Check claimed that this ‘roadmap’ was not made by the Indian government. It also claimed that the phases are of some other country’s roadmap.

A thing to note about all the tweets that were shared was that the users who posted them were not Indian citizens. Many UK residents used the same message to ask whether the Prime Minister of UK, Boris Johnson, has shared this or not. This has created a lot of confusion worldwide.

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The 5-phase government roadmap to ease COVID-19 restriction is given by the Irish Government

This 5-part phase to ease COVID-19 restrictions belongs to Ireland. The Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar along with his government brought forward this 5-phase plan to restart the country and bring it back to its original state. The same dates are being used by people in India and in the UK to claim that their government has brought forward this roadmap. The tweet below has the official press release of the Irish government and more information about the same. The tweet also claims that people are saying that the roadmap is for the Philippines as well. 

Google Trends Analysis

Google Trends shows how people have been regularly looking at how the government is supposed to ease down the lockdown. One can see that the searches reached a peak on May 11 at 8.30 PM. Another hike was seen on May 14 at 12.30 PM:

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12:55 IST, May 14th 2020