 "Govt mulls doing away with COVID-19 caller-tune after almost two years of raising awareness about disease")
Amid the steady decline in COVID-19 cases, the health ministry has decided to stop the caller tune on coronavirus awareness and precautions, said sources.
No more caller tune on #COVID19. It is going to stop soon: Official Sources
— ANI (@ANI) March 28, 2022
The COVID-19 caller tune was started two years ago when the pandemic hit the country. The caller tune featured the voice of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan wherein the actor listed safety measures for the pandemic.
A plea was also filed in the Delhi High Court in January last year seeking removal of Bachchan’s voice from the caller tune on the grounds that he himself had been infected by the virus. The plea was eventually dismissed by the high court.
Operators including Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea replaced their caller tunes in March 2020 on the directions of the government.
Later in January 2021, it was replaced by a “female voice” alerting callers about the COVID-19 vaccination drive with the message: “The new year has brought a new ray of hope in the form of vaccines. Vaccines developed in India are safe, effective and will provide immunity.”
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View AllInitially, the caller tune on COVID-19 used to start with the sound of people coughing, sneezing and then an advisory on the precautions to be taken to protect against coronavirus. Later, the massage was changed and the new message urged people to get vaccinated.
The caller tune also played a role in reminding people to not believe in rumours about the efficacy of vaccines with the message: “Dawaai bhi, kadaai bhi (medicine and caution both)".
The latest COVID-19 caller tune message talks about India’s vaccination milestone. While the government claims that the “caller tune” helped in spreading awareness, for citizens it became quite an inconvenience as they were forced to listen to the same message whenever they called someone. This also meant that the calls took longer to connect. Many had started to rely on WhatsApp just to avoid this caller tune from playing every time, according to CNN-News18.
With 1,270 new coronavirus infections being reported in a day, India’s total tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 4,30,20,723 on Monday, while the active cases further declined to 15,859. The death toll climbed to 5,21,035 with 31 daily fatalities.
Coronavirus cases are declining every month after a big resurgence reported in cases earlier, driven by the Omicron variant of the virus.
With input from agencies
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