Amid its second surge, with COVID-19 cases clocking in at about 350,000 per day, India's citizens are making use of social media apps like Tinder and Twitter to coordinate oxygen, drugs and medical supplies, according to an April 28 MIT Technology Review report.
Six things to know:
1. "A lot of people who are asking for leads, medicines — they don’t know where to go, who to reach out to, and even when they reach [someone], the medicines get exhausted because the demand is so high," said Aanchal Agrawal, a 29-year-old content creator and volunteer working to connect people in India with resources via Twitter.
2. Ms. Agrawal is working with at least 200 volunteers who are helping find sources of oxygen, beds and antiviral drugs for residents with COVID-19. She told the publication she spent the last two weeks combing through leads for her 42,000 Twitter followers.
3. Sohini Chattopadhyay and her friend created accounts on the online dating app Tinder to try to find a plasma donor for a friend who was battling COVID-19. Ms. Chattopadhyay and her friend turned to Tinder as a last resort when their other social media outreaches failed to return any promising leads.
4. Ms. Chattopadhyay's friend matched with someone on Tinder who had the right blood type and was willing to donate their plasma, she told MIT Technology Review. "I was pretty touched," she said. "What started as a desperate joke turned out to actually give us some leads, and in this case also found someone willing to donate."
5. Along with Twitter and Tinder, Instagram, Facebook and Google Docs have been used by ordinary citizens in India to crowdsource financial help and medical equipment. Experts have criticized the country's government for allowing massive public gatherings and not ordering enough of the vaccines needed to meet its inoculation targets, according to the report.
6. Giridhara Babu, an epidemiologist with the Public Health Foundation of India, told the publication that the government needs to be transparent and accountable. While it was caught off guard by the speed and scale of the second wave, the government needs to acknowledge the current surge and work with citizen groups for relief, he said.