BENGALURU: The Karnataka State Covid-19 war room on Friday received the national award under the category of using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in management of the Covid-19 at the 24th national conference on e- governance in Hyderabad. War room head Munish Moudgil, who received the award, told TNIE that the facility is an e-governance solution for effective management, integrated response and approach.
“We are the support network for the Covid warriors in the forefront. We make their lives easy by giving the details they want to act upon. We are a support system for Covid management on the field and we work round the clock. Most of the staff members have not taken a single day off ever since the pandemic,” Moudgil said.
The ward room was set up in March 2020 within just 2-3 days when the first wave hit, and a Corona watch mobile app was first created. Karnataka is the only state which has been using the app for contact tracing and Covid-19 watch. Now a patient management system, called the line list system, has been developed where all line lists of all patients, picked up from districts and taluks are spoken to. Triaging, testing and tracking is also done, he said.
Harayana has taken lessons from Karnataka on the estate war room. Also, during the first wave, then Puducherry Governor Kiran Bedi had contacted the war room for assistance and a team was sent for knowledge transfer. After this, every state tried it and are working on it.
“The pandemic needs a systematic and coordinated approach with IT for better working. In November 2020, Stanford University had evaluated the war room and had said that it was most effective in Covid-19 management. Our contact tracing model was picked by the Government of India in June-July 2020 and it had asked other states to implement it,” Moudgil said.
The core team in the war room comprises around 20-30 people apart from coordinators, technical and other staff. In the third wave now, the war room is striving to ensure effective information collection and systematic management. The team is now working on the listed core areas comprising bed management, oxygen supply, home isolation and test management.