It’s a war, this is how the state fights it

Welcome to the state war room. It does not just coordinate with other departments, but  ensures that every person gets the right treatment, the right doctors and timely aid.
A look at the inside of the BBMP war room in Bengaluru | Nagaraja Gadekal
A look at the inside of the BBMP war room in Bengaluru | Nagaraja Gadekal

BENGALURU: In the BBMP headquarters, there are a couple of rooms buzzing with activity 24/7. As you enter the high-security hall, you see men and women with their headphones on, answering calls or peering into computers or having video conference calls. You have huge LED screens on one side of the hall. And there is a conference room. Welcome to the state war room. It does not just coordinate with other departments, but ensures that every person gets the right treatment, the right doctors and timely aid.

The war room has shown that with technology, cases can be handled better. And to ease working, it has also broadly categorised people into five categories — common man, migrants, contacts, quarantines and people who have tested positive. “The role of the war room is to make available real-time information, do real-time analysis and integrate IT and technology. Without IT and technology, fighting COVID-19 would be difficult. The aim of the war room is to build IT system, to handle all parts of the issue. At the war room, not just coordination of cases is done, but it has gone a step ahead.

The patients are also tracked to assess how they are doing,” said Munish Moudgil, nodal officer, incharge of the state war room. Apart from this, the war room also handles calls made to 104, for telemedicines and also coordinates with specialised doctors to handle critical cases. Explaining in simple terms how the war room coordinates and interacts with patients, Moudgil said, “If a common man calls over phone, the tele-medicine team interacts with him and if he is suspected with the symptoms, he is sent to the fever clinic.

Then the team finds out whether the person visited the fever clinic or not. If not, the health department is put on duty to get the person to do the tests.” “Similarly, the health of migrant labourers is tracked through Apps and the third is to keep a track of healthy people, primary and secondary contacts. The war room also tracks the laboratories, the supplies and their travel. The whole eco-system is created and managed,” Moudgil said. Another crucial role the war room plays is in analysing and reporting hot spots, clusters, risk area generation using GIS analysis. A daily report is prepared and the researchers from IISc have also come forward to join hands with the state government in doing the analysis.

App launch to speed up contact tracing
“We are creating a contact tracing App. Earlier, the details were manually picked and given to the officials on the field. This was difficult. The App is being rolled out on Monday and it is for government officials only where they load the information on the App directly. Any contact of the corresponding district teams can pick it up immediately. This will also give clarity to the state government teams on the number of contacts and tracking,” Moudgil said.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com