Mohali administration ropes in NGO

Tribune News Service

Mohali, May 2

In view of a surge in Covid-19 cases, the district administration today roped in an NGO – StepOne – that will support it in contacting and monitoring Covid patients in home isolation via IVR calls.

Disclosing this, Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan said in order to keep tabs on the health status of Covid patients, the District Administration had augmented the existing system of making manual calls with IVR calls in the district. He said earlier a team of telecallers, under the supervision of the district Covid patient tracking officer (CPTO), used to contact each coronavirus patient in home isolation and call them daily to take an update on their health status.

Dayalan said with over 9,000 active cases coupled with daily surge in the number of positive cases, keeping tabs on patients manually had become challenging.

“We have roped in an NGO - StepOne - that will support the administration in contacting and monitoring Covid patients in home isolation via IVR calls,” he said.

Dayalan said the system would automatically fetch the data of Covid patients in home isolation and call each number. The patient would have to reply to questions and update their status assessed by themselves. Based on their replies, the system would flag those needing immediate attention as red and they would subsequently be contacted by a team of doctors for further treatment.

He said it had been observed that generally people either do not respond to automated call or disconnect it without answering appropriately. The system-generated IVR calls were multi-lingual. A person could choose the desired language and respond accordingly.

Making an appeal to Covid-19 patients in Home Isolation, he said timely follow-up was in the interest of patients. So, they should respond to the call and update their health status as and when asked.

Ravjot Kaur, SP (Rural)-cum-Covid Patient Tracking Officer for the district, said monitoring of home isolation cases of Covid-19 patients was required to be done efficiently and diligently in order to ensure they had proper information and were able to escalate any health-related problem that they might face during the home isolation period.

About the system

Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan said the system would automatically fetch the data of Covid patients in home isolation and call each number. The patient would have to reply to questions and update their status assessed by themselves. Based on their replies, the system would flag those needing immediate attention as red and they would subsequently be contacted by a team of doctors for further treatment.

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