Basseterre, St. Kitts, February 4, 2020 (SKNIS): Minister of State with responsibility for Health, Honourable Senator Wendy Phipps, has warned the public against spreading misinformation with regards to the Novel Coronavirus through social media.
“An epidemic of information is coming through social media, a lot of it inaccurate a lot of it meant to instil fear.” She continues by saying, “we guard against other forms of bad intent and fall out which may come from things like xenophobia,” said Senator Phipps during a press conference to inform the media and the country on a whole on recent information pertaining to the Novel Coronavirus.
She said that “just because we might have the epicenter of the coronavirus being in Wuhan Province, Mainland China, it does not give us the right as a people of St. Kitts and Nevis or the rest CARICOM member states to have people of Chinese origin, walking around as if they have a bull’s eye on them and that you should treat them as if they have leprosy.”
“That is something that we do not want, and we are seeing some of that emerging in some of the social media postings, going so far as to boycotting businesses that are owned by Chinese nationals,” added Minister Phipps.
She said that “these are not things that this government would stand behind and we would seek the indulgence of the public to cease and desist from doing things like that, not just here but also in the region.”
