Virtual volunteers reach out to Covid patients

Coimbatore: A group of good Samaritans have come together to help pandemic-hit people find beds in hospitals, oxygen cylinders, and offer medical consultation. In the last 10 days, they received 1,500 requests for assistance and helped half of them.
As many as 500 volunteers in the team, most of them working professionals and some in foreign countries, have formed two groups Chennai Volunteers Forum (CVF) and Chennai Rescue Relief (CRR). While the first group takes care of low to medium Covid cases and requests for ICU beds, the latter handles emergency cases. They receive more requests from Chennai, followed by Coimbatore and other districts, and even from Karnataka.
They decided to form the team two weeks ago when the number of cases started to climb. Initially, Prasanth Gopalakrishnan, Thendral Manoharan, Deepa Rajagopala, Priya Kannaiah and Sandeep Vijayakumar pitched in to form the team, which grew from strength to strength. Most of the volunteers are IT professionals, doctors, teachers and businessmen.
“Initially, we created a Google Docs document with 15 questions like oxygen level, CT scan score, symptoms, whether the patient is on oxygen support, type of bed required and hospital preference. Once the form is submitted, a unique ID for the patient will be generated. The data will be updated in the back-end and would be converted to WhatsApp format automatically. Then it will be posted manually in the volunteer group and volunteers will ring up the person to verify details,” Prasanth told TOI. “We have set up separate WhatsApp groups for various types of requirements like beds, oxygen support and medical consultation to avoid confusion.”
The team offers counselling service and emotional support to people, who go into panic mode when they detect Covid symptoms or test positive, said Thendral. “Our volunteers help such people interact with doctors via video conference. We have been receiving several requests for counselling and for finding hospital beds.”
On an average, the team receives 200 requests a day, said Prasanth. “While we manage to resolve half of the cases, we forwarding the rest to the government war room in Chennai. Of late, it has become difficult to find beds in hospitals,” he said. “While team members in India work during the day, those in foreign countries extend their support during the night. About 80% of the volunteers are working professional and most of them work for 16 hours a day.”