As a second wave of coronavirus overwhelms India’s hospitals, desperate relatives turn to WhatsApp for help
- With beds, ventilators and oxygen drying up, relatives of those infected with Covid-19 describe a health system in collapse
- As medical helplines are swamped, many seek information from social media, where advice may be well-intentioned but is often out-of-date
On the last day of his father’s life, in between frantically working the phones to find a hospital bed, Swapnil Rastogi, 26, kept patting and reassuring him. He could see the panic in his eyes as his oxygen level kept dipping. “Papa, please be patient, please hold on. We will get you on a ventilator,” he kept saying.
Rastogi’s efforts to find treatment for his father were in vain. Raj Kumar Rastogi, 59, died in his Lucknow home on Monday at 11pm. His last words were “Have you bought any oranges for your mother?”.
Residents in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, are meant to contact the bombastically named Integrated Command Control Centre, run by the government, to find out which hospital has beds for Covid-19 patients.
The messaging app is awash with helpline numbers, advice on which hospital might have an ICU bed, a ventilator, or plasma in response to anguished pleas for help from families who are seeing their loved ones deteriorating in front of their eyes.