A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced free vaccine for all adults the Centre on Tuesday released revised guidelines for the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme. These guidelines will be implemented from June 21. As per the new changes, the Union Health Ministry capped charges on the provided vaccines in the country. While Covaxin and Covishiled are priced at Rs 1,410 and Rs 780 per dose respectively, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will cost Rs 1,145 per dose in private hospitals.
India recorded 86,498 new cases in the 24 hours ending 8 am Tuesday, taking the country’s total infections to over 2.89 crore. This is the lowest spike of daily cases in 66 days. This is also the first time in over 2 months that the cases have fallen below the 1 lakh mark. Active cases further declined to over 13 lakh and over 2.73 crore people recovered after testing positive. With 2,123 new deaths, the toll is now at 3,51,309.
As the pandemic hit the country, one among the several industries which took the blow was the ‘Wedding Industry’. Prudent couples are postponing the ceremony or are minimizing the guest list or downsizing the number of events, as a result, weddings have become fewer and smaller, and the never-ending fun ceremonies and long-list of guests is pruned.
Meanwhile, amid this situation, a viral newspaper clip which shows a matrimonial ad is going viral, which claims that a vaccinated bride is seeking only a “fully vaccinated groom who has taken both the doses of Covishield.” The cutout of the newspaper ad quickly garnered a lot of attention online, leaving many in splits. It even caught the attention of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who shared the ad saying: “No doubt the preferred marriage gift will be a booster shot!? Is this going to be our New Normal?”
At the time of writing this article, the photo has nearly 8,000 likes and 846 retweets and NDTV also published a news report on it. Believing it to be true, Maharashtra Youth Congress president Satyajeet Tambe also posted the ‘ad’ on Twitter. Another photo shared by a Facebook user gives a broader look into the picture, and it also has the logo of the paper as “GOA TIMES” published on 4th June, Friday, 2021.
Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the matrimonial ad is not real but was merely created using an editing tool. The clipping is fake and created by using fodey.com, an online graphic or meme generator, popular for its option of creating one’s own newspaper clipping with headline, date, name and story.
Hitherto, fodey.com has been used to create fake news clippings as well. One such clipping that went viral claimed that 4,000 RSS workers were arrested under IPC section 377 for performing unnatural sexual acts in 1971.
The original post viz. the viral ‘ad’ was a “harmless” campaign launched by a man from Aldona, Goa, to influence people to get the Covid vaccine shot. Created by Savio Figueiredo, a community pharmacist, the ad had so many falling for it that Figueiredo’s phone has not stopped buzzing since. Savio’s original post was shared on Facebook last week had more than just the eye-catching matrimonial ad. Titled “The future of Matrimonials”, he shared the ad along with a phone number of a vaccination centre, explaining the revised dates to get the second dose of the injection, after the interval was increased.
Savio said, “I created the ad with the intention of encouraging people to take the vaccine and posted it on my Facebook page. Someone got the bull by the tail, thought it was real, and now it has gone viral.” He added, “I lost very dear friends in the second wave because they did not get vaccinated in spite of me begging them.”
He was astounded and found it hilarious how he started getting calls from as far as Kolkata, Odisha and Mangaluru, enquiring about the marriage prospect. The 58 year old added, “If even 10 people who are on the fence get vaccinated, I will be satisfied”.
Though his phone hasn’t stopped ringing, since his original number was mentioned in the fake ad, he doesn’t regret it much. “It was meant for just my friends on Facebook. But if it means that some people will get motivated and convinced to get vaccinated, I don’t care about the inconvenience,” he said.
Thus, the ad is fake, but it caught attention and looked real as many Indian matrimonial ads often carry a long list of criteria for prospective partners based on height, build, complexion, caste, religion and education to name a few. And as per the ‘new normal’ it sounds sensible enough to put “vaccinated bride/groom” as one of the main criteria.
