Left locked down within the four walls of homes and flooded with scary information from various platforms on coronavirus, scared citizens are hankering for credible inputs on precautionary health measures and treatment practices online.
The Government’s websites seems to be the most reliable at this difficult phase as on Friday itself, 28 crore people logged in to the Union Health Ministry portal seeking answers to the range of queries they have on their mind about the viral infection.
Talking about the high online traffic, Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary Union Health Ministry said just a few days ago, around 22 crore people had clicked on the Government website while on Friday, nearly 28 crore hit the Government portal.
He was responding to complaints that many times the helplines launched by the Centre and States crashed. Obviously such issue arose from overloading.
“As the situation has evolved by every progressive day, we have increased the number of helplines. But load has increased,” he said.
For the benefit of people and to ensure that their problems are sorted out at the earliest, the Ministry has raised the number of helplines. “We had started from 10 helplines which we increased to 30. But now, in view of increased load on the existing ones, the Ministry has expanded helpline services to 150 which keep on ringing,” said a senior health official.
Plans are afoot to increase the lines to reach out to maximum number of people.
Aggarwal, however said that people can approach the Ministry through e-mails and letters or any medium as well. “We will try to resolve the problem,” he assured.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, the Government and States have launched a number of helplines besides apps and upgraded their websites, and put up circulars and advisories to raise awareness and answer questions about the Covid-19 pandemic.
For instance, the Union Health Ministry along with the Government initiative MyGov has launched a helpline number on WhatsApp. Users across the country can reach out to the Health Ministry on +91 9013151515 for credible information.
In the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, many digital health care companies in the country too are trying to reach out to people to promote remote diagnosis.
Ratnesh Sharma from CallHealth Services said, “During these trying times, we are witnessing a high surge in virtual services including doctor consults, special consult etc. In line with that, we have created a dedicated helpline “CallHealth Line for Covid-19”. Anyone across the country, rather from anywhere in the world, can call the helpline @ 91 33 55 77 99 to avail a free doctor consultation if they display or have queries pertaining to Covid-19 symptoms.”
