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    Covid-19 volunteers on social media keep hope alive in darkest hour

    Synopsis

    Covid-19 volunteers on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp say requests and pleas for assistance are still coming in but were now moving from the metros to small cities and towns.

    Coronavirus diseaseReuters
    A woman walks past a graffiti on a street, amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mumbai, India, May 10, 2021. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
    New Delhi: As Covid-19 cases in India touched a record high of more than four lakh per day earlier in April, Bengaluru resident Mahita Nagaraj’s ‘Humankind Global’ helpline number on WhatsApp started witnessing a surge in calls.

    Nagaraj, who also runs a community service Facebook page called Humankind Global, said her helpline number saw close to 20,000 calls on May 9. While the daily Covid cases in India have come down to under 3 lakh this week, she said requests were still pouring in fairly quickly.

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    “Request centres have moved from urban areas to smaller towns. While we saw a surge in requests in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai a couple of weeks ago, now we are seeing requests from places such as Haridwar, Coimbatore, Salem, Rajahmundry, towns in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh,” she said.

    The nature of requests has also changed. “Earlier, they were mostly around ICUs and ventilators, now around medication. Bed requests are still coming in. People are seeking medicines for ailments like black fungus,” Nagaraj said.

    Covid-19 volunteers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, who helped connect scores of Indian users with oxygen, hospital beds and medicines over the past one month, said requests and pleas for assistance were still coming in but were now moving from the metros to small cities and towns.

    Goa-based senior marketing manager Alysha Lobo, who runs the CovidAsha bot on WhatsApp alongside other volunteers, hasn’t seen any fall in requests. “Goa, for instance, is not making it to the news in terms of the number of deaths and cases that we are seeing per day. We continue to see active conversations and active SOS requests on the bot,” she added.

    The CovidAsha bot aims to bridge the gap between registered suppliers and people in need of Covid-related supplies such as oxygen, ambulances and medicines. Delhi-NCR still leads in terms of the high alert level when it comes to requests on the bot, which has generated over 38,000 interactions since May 4, but requests are shifting to Goa, Bengaluru and cities in UP. The aim now is to provide assistance to tier-2 and tier-3 cities, Lobo said.

    As guidelines and medical treatment protocols evolve and change every day, Twitter and Facebook said they were working on ways to surface relevant information for users and encourage people to detect misinformation around the pandemic.

    “We have been humbled to watch a positive people’s movement take shape on Twitter. Individuals have come together to lend a hand, support and connect each other to life-saving facilities, medicines and food. As we’ve watched these conversations unfold, we are working to surface the most relevant, important and valuable information that could help save lives,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

    Twitter launched a Covid-19 SOS page on April 29 and a state-specific Covid-19 page on May 12.

    The company currently has six state-specific pages available, for Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab which are among the hardest hit by Covid-19.

    It has also introduced ‘home timeline’ prompts featuring latest information about Covid-19 vaccines in English and Hindi.

    Facebook said while it would be hard to source data on how many SOS posts and messages were seen on the platform for assistance as infections rose, it was working closely with managed communities that were working on providing Covid-linked assistance and resources. “Over the coming weeks we will be rolling out a new campaign in India to educate and inform people about how to detect misinformation related to Covid-19,” the company said.

    Facebook also said in India it was expanding Covid-19 announcement, a tool for health departments of states and union territories to share essential Covid-related updates with communities.

    On WhatsApp, MyGov Corona Helpdesk, the official WhatsApp chatbot by the ministry of health and MyGov now also allows its users to locate the nearest vaccination centre. The chatbot has processed over 45 million conversations on WhatsApp so far and recently crossed 30 million users.

    Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and cofounder at Indian microblogging platform Koo, said besides onboarding government organisations, healthcare startups for information and resources around Covid, the platform was also looking at automating information around vaccine availability in big and small cities.

    A Facebook company spokesperson said on its photo- and video-sharing app Instagram, taps on Instagram guides made in India nearly tripled in the second wave as more people supported each other with information around vaccination, home isolation and mental health resources.

    But, Sonali Vaid, a physician and public health professional based in Delhi, who actively assisted people on Twitter during the surge, said rural India and the urban poor were not going to post SOS requests on social media platforms such as Twitter. “As cases decline, volunteer groups need to move their attention to disadvantaged sections of society and help them get access to vaccines and medical care. These communities, which can actually benefit from help, will not be found on Twitter,” she added.
    The Economic Times

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