The Health Department reached out to over 5.53 lakh persons, including a majority of COVID patients, and provided tele-consultation services so far since May 1 through the ‘104’ COVID-19 call centre set up to offer COVID-related services to the public.
The call centre has 5,012 doctors, including 951 specialists, enrolled to remotely offer medical consultation regarding COVID, according to the State COVID Command Control Centre.
In a release, it was stated that so far doctors made 5,53,306 calls to persons requiring medical assistance as of 4 p.m. on Wednesday. A majority of the calls — 4,04,380 — were made to persons under home isolation, and over 70,000 calls were made to people as part of the fever survey. During this period (May 1-June 9), the State reported 6.78 lakh infections.
After the consultations, doctors recommended home isolation, tests, hospital admission, home quarantine, Covid Care Centre admissions, medication and others to the infected persons and those suspected to have contracted COVID.
Calls handled
On the other hand, the call centre also handled over 4.89 lakh calls as of Wednesday. Over 1.95 lakh people called the helpline for general information about COVID and over 1.02 lakh people called for COVID tests.
About 91,000 persons called seeking hospital admission and 70,000 persons called to know their sample test result.
Most of these calls were made from Visakhapatnam (1.23 lakh), Krishna (1.01 lakh), Guntur (0.63 lakh) and East Godavari (0.46 lakh) districts, while people in other districts made not more than 25,000 calls each.
The call centre was revamped and revived on April 16 following rising in COVID incidence in the second wave at HCL Campus in Gannavarm of Krishna district. Later it was shifted to APIIC building in Mangalagiri in May.
The call centre works round the clock with 100 executives on two shifts and 40 executives on the night shift. It also has 24 doctors on board.
