Outgoing calls of Odisha Covid19 call centre crosses 1.06 lakh mark

Bhubaneswar, The outgoing calls at the 1929 24X7 COVID Call Centre for the Temple City has crossed the 1 lakh mark.

By the day ending yesterday, the call centre, set up by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) at the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC) of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limite (BSCL) office, had made 1,06,326 outgoing calls.

While the outgoing calls mainly comprised of the calls to home isolation patients to know their health-care status, the calls also included 2,312 outgoing calls to Red Flag patients. The idea behind categorizing home isolation patients into Red Flag and Green Flag cases is to monitor moderately ill and patients with mild COVID symptoms. Each Reg Flag patient gets a call from the call centre for three consecutive days along with frequent RRT visits to his/her homes.

Vaccination Status

Besides caring for the COVID affected people across the Temple City, the 1929 Call Centre executives are currently checking the vaccination status of the frontline health workers as the BMC Commissioner Sri Sanjay Kumar Singh has focused on ensuring the well-being of the workforce.

The call centre executives till yesterday night have called 6,844 frontline health workers. The beneficiaries are asked regarding the status of the vaccine they have taken, how many doses and where etc.

Doctors’Consultation

The call centre executives also helped 28962 callers in having doctor’s consultation as many were seeking medical advice from the team of 19 doctors, who are available in different groups in three different shifts.

Incoming Calls

Similarly, by June 13 the 1929 24X7 COVID Call centre received 88,658 incoming calls. The incoming calls are generally i.e. requesting for hospital shifting, visits of rapid response teams (RRTs) to home isolation patients, getting discharge certificates after home isolation period is over, information on testing, vaccination, slots, vaccination of the elderly and differently abled, students planning to go to foreign countries for higher study, death certificates, paid home isolation facilities, travel related protocols and areas and also cremation related queries.

It can be noted here that by May 20, while the call centre had handled 50,414 outgoing calls to home isolation patients in order to keep track of their health status, it received 51,351 incoming calls from the COVID affected and related persons.

24X7, In Three Shifts

Apart from the doctors, 48 executives are working in three shifts in different groups to handle both the incoming and outgoing calls at the facility, which functions at the BOC of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited’s office in BMC-Bhawani Mall, Saheed Nagar. The executives are working under the guidance of six supervising officials of BSCL.

While the first shift of the centre starts at 6 am and goes up to 2 pm, the second shift is scheduled between 2 pm and 10 pm and the third one between 10 pm and 6 am of the next morning.

The calls are managed through 35 work stations. While 15 are used for receiving incoming calls and 5 for outgoing ones, 8 are used by doctors to give consultation. In addition to this, several workstations have been specifically arranged to take the registration bookings for vaccination and testing of 60+ age groups, to register students planning to go abroad with vaccination, doorstep RTPCR testing for a senior citizen and helping senior citizens to be picked-up and dropped following vaccination at nearby centre close to their localities.