With the rise in rate of new #COVID19 cases across the world, it’s time to believe that even ‘light’ cannot travel faster than this pandemic.

But people in India unaware of the speed of this pandemic truly believe that after ‘clapping sound’, ‘light’ can boost them morally to combat #COVID19 on Sunday night as Prime Minister Narendra Modi urges people to light diyas for 9 minutes at 9 pm.

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More than one million cases of #COVID19 have been confirmed, as 66,874 new cases were diagnosed till Thursday, according to data compiled by researchers at John Hopskin University in Baltimore, Maryland.

There has been a consistent rise of new #COVID19 cases along with the new deaths in most of the countries, which are gripped in this pandemic.

Also read: COVID-19: ‘Fake news’ case lodged against Tripura CM

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The increase of new cases and deaths has exceeded 20,000 and 2,000 respectively all across the world.

USA, Spain, Germany, Iran, UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherland, Portugal and Romania have witnessed new cases ranging from 500 to 3,000+ on Saturday according to the website worldometers.info.

Also read: #CheckTheFake-4: WhatsApp ‘forwards’ and the impact

Even India is about to touch the number of 3000 i.e. 2784 active cases and total death of 75 (MoHFW) so far now adding more than a thousand cases and 50 death cases in last couple of days in connection to Nizammuddin Tablighi Jamaat event in early march.

As per the GitHub data repository for novel coronavirus operated by John Hopskin University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE), the number of #COVID19 cases as of march 23 has doubled in every 2 days in average in countries like China, Iran, Italy, South Korea, Spain, UK, France, Germany and United States.

Also read: #CheckTheFake-3: nCoronavirus is secular

When a quantity is multiplied by two every three days, the original quantity ends up being multiplied by 10 in about 10 days and by 100 in about 20 days. This is a very fast rate of growth (JHU CSSE).

In an outbreak of an infectious disease it is important to study the death rate, not only the number of deaths, but also the growth rate at which the number of deaths is increasing.

This is because even if the current numbers of deaths are small when compared with other diseases, a fast growth rate can lead to very large numbers rapidly.

Also read: #CheckTheFake-2: Filtering #fakenews on social media, a huge challenge amid Global Public Health Emergency 

Countries like Iran, Spain, UK, etc. witnessed the highest number of new deaths ranging from 10 to 800 deaths till Saturday.

The exact death rate is difficult to calculate as official death tolls for covid-19 may exclude people who died before they could be tested.

Also read: #CheckTheFake – 1: Celebrating 365 days of non-stop #fakenews

They also ignore people who succumbed to other causes, perhaps because hospitals had no room to treat them

“The data is the tip of the iceberg,” Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo’s capital in Italy, told The Economist on Friday. “Too many victims are not included in the reports because they die at home.”

#CheckTheFake on #COVID19

FAKE: No 9. 9 am speech, 9 minutes at 9pm on April 5 (5+4=9). 9 days lockdown over. 9 days left from April 5th. 9 Planets. No 9 = Mars (Mangal – the planet of Light & Fire). Modi ji igniting the planet of light & fire for Welfare of India. Simply Outstanding!!! (a WhatsApp forward quoted)

FACT: There is no relevance of Number 9 killing novel coronavirus. “Number 9 is the number of planet Mars, but to get the positive effect of the planet, the calculations of dates or doing something on date 9 or at 9 pm won’t work. There is no magic in Number 9 as claimed in the viral messages” (said astrologer Shailendra Pandey talking to India Today).

#CheckTheFake is a movement against #Infodemic in this crisis, initiated by Dr Anamika Ray Memorial Trust #ARMT (www.armt.in) in collaboration with The Assam Tribune and Northeast Now (www.nenow.in) to create awareness on #fakenews on #Coronavirus and improve media literacy through #Cartoons. ARMT Research