Key claims
- WHO's risk communication team launched EPI-WIN immediately after COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern to counter misinformation using targeted information distribution.
- Social media amplifies traditional epidemics of misinformation, making them spread "faster and further" — a new scale of challenge requiring rapid, evidence-based responses to fill information voids.
- WHO partnered with social media platforms to ensure that searches for "coronavirus" or "COVID-19" surface WHO resources and official government health information as the first result.
- Google created SOS Alerts on COVID-19 in six official UN languages to deliver authoritative information to users searching on Google and other platforms.
- Traditional mass media also spreads misinformation — outlets often use extreme imagery (e.g., overemphasized PPE use) that sends misleading public messages.
- Public health authorities must help media understand evidence standards so journalists don't "get ahead of the evidence."
Notes
This piece captures WHO's early infodemic response strategy in real time (February 2020), before the scale of COVID-19 disinformation became fully apparent. It documents a significant institutional pivot by WHO to treat misinformation as a public health threat requiring coordinated platform intervention. The article emphasizes speed and evidence-based communication as core defenses and foregrounds social media platforms as critical infrastructure for health communication — a dependence that would later be scrutinized as debates over moderation escalated.