Students and professionals start website to verify the tsunami of information about COVID-19; aim to put forward accurate, timely uploads; 350 volunteers dedicated to fact-check initiative.
In an earlier initiative, volunteers donated and installed physical barriers inside autorickshaws to stop the spread of Coronavirus
When India’s second wave brought with it a shortage of beds and oxygen in major cities, a lot of social media users pitched in, sharing numbers and contact points. Soon, people realised that a lot of the information was either dated or incorrect; some were downright malicious and fraudulent.
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Vidhi Shah, president, Rotaract Club of Medicrew
To sift through this tsunami of information, the Rotaract Club of Medicrew, a non-profit arm of Rotary International, has established a website — RC Medicrew Covid Portal — to serve as a one-stop verified source for all COVID-19 queries and needs.
All-India information
There are at least 350 medical and para-medical volunteers dedicated to the fact-check initiative. The portal will be up and running on Saturday.
“We are a pan-India group working across states, checking information found on WhatsApp especially, and verifying it,” said Tanisha Shekhar, who is the Mumbai-based club’s vice-president. “Recently, I had to call so many numbers for oxygen for a close family friend. I had to dial so many numbers for an ambulance to shift her to another hospital, it was enervating, tiresome and truly frightening. I realised first hand that the barrage of information and numerous ‘forwards’ by well-meaning people do not always work. Phones are switched off, or, the information itself is incorrect.”
Senior club members say they have been holding training sessions for the volunteers on how to seek and verify information from hospitals or facilities. Members call each number and verify it, be it a helpline or a bed availability resource.
Club President and founder Vidhi Shah said, “We have our content team of volunteers who cull information from everywhere social media, personal contacts, government mediated websites, the Medicrew Resource Library which has information from verified sources. This is fact checked by our Task Force and then uploaded on covid.rcmedicrew.org.” Shah, a physiotherapist, cited a personal experience where she had to dial several numbers, drawing a blank several times.
Shah added, “Our volunteers will be calling numbers in two time slots, in the morning and evening... The idea is that only resources that work should be loaded so that people are spared the frustration and time wastage, that comes with calling hordes of numbers only to be told: this is a wrong number, or have it ring incessantly with no answer.”
Link in a blink
The site with verified information will be live on Saturday: covid.rcmedicrew.org
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