COVID-19 and SOS tweets in India

“Be safe, be smart, be kind” were the words of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. India has been facing the worst second wave in the pandemic. With daily cases crossing 350 000 at the time of writing, hospitals in India have witnessed a surge in the number of critically ill patients. The battle between the health-care system serving the second largest population in the world and the severe manifestations of COVID-19 is intense and ongoing. Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and ambulance drivers are at the forefront of managing the complications of COVID-19. In a Media Watch piece, Graham Mackenzie described the experience of lockdown in the UK, as captured through social media.¹ In India, social media has turned out to be a saviour in the middle of this pandemic.

Hashtags such as #Covid19IndiaHelp, #SOSDelhi, and #helpcovidindia have been used by people on Twitter to request urgent help to find nearest hospitals, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators, important drugs such as remdesivir and tocilizumab, and blood products. With some hospitals facing scarcity of oxygen due to the unprecedented rise in sick patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome, people have come forward to help, from government administration, local leaders, small welfare groups, and even businessmen. States have cooperated in response to calls for help through supplying oxygen to neighbouring states. Countries such as the UK and Germany came forward to supply resources amid the crisis. Doctors used tweets to guide COVID-19 patients on medications and monitoring at home. Doctors from different specialties have used social media to give telemedicine consultations for free. More importantly, doctors have cleared the misconceptions of users.

Important tweets have clarified issues such as need for hospital admission and prone ventilation, use of the 6 min walk test in mild disease and steroids in managing severe disease, and education on COVID-19 reporting and data system staging of CT chest scans.2, 3 Hospitals updated the day-to-day vacant beds' status in wards and intensive care units in tweets. Home-based RT-PCR swab sampling helplines were shared and free-food helpline numbers for patients with COVID-19 isolated at home were circulated.

With the ongoing largest vaccination drive, the government is leaving no stone unturned to make vaccines available to all citizens.⁴ The Indian Government provided nearby vaccination centres and details of registration in tweets from officials. Links to vaccination portals—through which citizens could schedule their vaccine appointments—and awareness of vaccines were spread with hashtags such as #Unite2FightCorona and #LargestVaccineDrive. Important information on safety and efficacy of vaccines was shared. The government released home-based treatment and hospital-management protocols. Social distancing and correct mask use were prioritised. Lockdown instructions and guidelines for interstate travel were circulated by official handles of government. COVID-19 fact checkers were updated to address misinformation on social media.

Understanding the support provided by social media during the pandemic might help to create support for crises in the future.⁵ There are limitations of social media, such as the spread of rumours and panic messages and anxiety induced by sharing stories of suffering. Twitter users, however, have paved the way to turn social media into a blessing during the pandemic. We have witnessed many stories of courage, struggles to survive, and ordinary citizens turning into saviours to help society in one of the worst pandemics ever faced.

I declare no competing interests.