Helping India's Covid-19 vaccination with 'scientific information': Google

Company says it is working with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Google provides "timely, accurate, science-based information" about vaccines as India continues its inoculation campaign against Covid-19, said the US technology giant on Friday, listing work on its products.

Google said it is working with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a scientific narrative about the vaccination. It works with the ministry’s rapid risk response team to track misinformation, using social media listening tools across regions and languages.

“This is crucial because instances of misinformation and disinformation about the vaccine, its need, and its efficacy can seriously undermine this public health intervention,” said the company.

Google Search has "knowledge panels" in in English and eight Indian languages for queries about vaccine effectiveness, safety, distribution and side effects. The panels--sourced from MoHFW--provide answers to commonly asked questions and displays real-time statistics around vaccinations completed.

Google teams have supported the MoHFW in optimising the ministry’s website for mobile viewers. “We also helped localize their various vaccination resource pages into the eight Indian languages listed above,” said Google.

Google’s YouTube video-sharing platform has information panels that show up when people search for information on Covid-19. The panels have a banner redirecting to key vaccine resources on the MoHFW website.

The company said it is working with the MoHFW and the Foundation to provide information on vaccination centres on Google Search, Maps and Google Assistant, and expects to roll this out in the coming weeks.

To help government officials, the company delivers regular Google Trends reports on Covid vaccine queries. These reflect interest around the vaccination from month to month across regions.