**1. Introduction**

With the advent of the Coronavirus disease pandemic in 2019, which was later referred to as COVID-19, great fear of the unknown gripped the whole world as the World Health Organisation (WHO) broke the news globally. It was therefore important for people and nations around the world to get the needed information on what the disease is all about and how to stay protected from it considering its potent deadly nature. However, it was quickly established that getting credible information was challenge world over. What aggravated the global fear was the fact that the virus is new, spreading at a fast rate from one country to another and also killing people in the process. To make matter worse, scientists and doctors were also having a difficult time to understand the nature of the virus and its ability to spread from person to another and from one country to another [1–4]. Within a short period of its existence, the impact of Covid-19 was felt globally as the disease was able to spread rapidly across the world, which brought about great fear and a sudden period of uncertainties among people and governments of the world. Even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and health professionals globally try to understand the nature of this novel virus and how to stop its spread, people globally started to give various meanings and interpretation to the nature and spread of this virus. Considering the effect that this could have on the world, WHO decided to declare a "massive infodemic" on February 2, 2020 [5, 6].

On February 2nd, the World Health Organisation declared a "massive infodemic", noting that there is an over-abundance of reported information on COVID-19, which are harmful to the people that come in contact with these kind of information. The reason for the declaration of "massive infodemic" is that the over abundant amount of information that exist are both accurate and false about COVID-19 [6]. This in some ways also make it hard for people around the world rely on or trust the available sources of information on the growing pandemic and the danger that it poses to humanity. The world was then faced with challenges on how to get the needed and right information on how to avoid contacting the deadly virus and at the same time prevent its spread. Apart from the efforts of WHO, it must be noted that the governments of countries around the world also moved with speed to deal with issues around infodemic, educate their citizens on the pandemic and thus stop the spread of COVID-19 [7]. In addition, as COVID-19 infections continue to increase around the world, many countries and governments responded with the famous 'lockdowns' by shutting down places like workplaces, schools and international borders and airports in order to contain the spread of the virus.

For example, in South Africa, the government through the Minister of Health continuously caution and educate the citizens on the dangers of spreading fake and misleading information about the virus. It must be noted that the South African President, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa was also very active in the fight against COVID-19 as he regularly communicates with the citizens through his famous televised national addressed tagged as "Family Meeting" [8]. The aim of the President's "Family Meeting" was to update the citizens on the global, national and regional state of the pandemic, make them to be aware of government efforts to curb the spread of the pandemic and also sensitise the citizens on the need to avoid the spread of fake and misleading news about COVID-19 [9]. This was very important to avoid hindrances to government efforts and the works of health workers towards containing the spread of the virus. This chapter therefore seeks to look at people's perspectives on COVID-19, the effects of fake news during the pandemic and the various efforts of the South African government towards curbing the spread of COVID-19. The Chapter begins by looking at the advent and global spread of COVID-19, the Spread of COVID-19 in South Africa, fake news and people's perspectives on COVID-19, dealing with the myths around COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19 Misinformation, Vaccine Hesitancy and Anti-Vaccine, the theoretical framework, methodology, data analysis, discussion and conclusion.
