The COVID-19 pandemic, with its arrival in 2020, marked a shift from normalcy that is unlikely to be forgotten any time soon. Today, it is all but a bad memory as the number of cases being reported in India has reduced, the masks are off and life has gotten back to what it used to be. But on Sunday, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) COVID-19 War Room, with its daily bulletin, will clock its 1000th — a reminder of the pandemic, its suffering and all that was lost and learnt through it.
Officers involved in the establishment of the War Room recalled how it was the first such set up in the country in March 2020 by the then BBMP Commissioner B.H. Anil Kumar. “This was where the model operational framework — tools, strategies, documents — for COVID-19 crisis management was piloted, demonstrated, compiled, and shared for replication across the country. The BBMP COVID-19 War Room received the Innovation Award in India Smart Cities Awards Contest (ISAC) 2020 for development of Index Application for data integration. Bengaluru was rated last year as one of the six top cities of the world for COVID management by the World Economic Forum,” said Hephsiba Rani Korlapati, the then Managing Director, Bengaluru, Smart City who was posted as Special Officer, BBMP COVID-19 War Room.
“The ‘leaving no citizen uninformed approach’ was identified as the objective at the BBMP COVID-19 War Room in March 2020. The bulletin is also distinct for the kind of inclusivity of ideas and processes of inputs and feedback received from Resident Welfare Associations, social media platforms, and the public at large. It also draws heavily from the suggestions of public health experts and academia, mainly the Indian Institute of Science,” she said, adding that it was initiated in the fourth week of March 2020 and is being issued daily in English and Kannada too. On 09.10.2020, the 200th bulletin was issued.
Officials also recalled how the Bengaluru War Room developed an application called Index Application, which helps to access the information on COVID-19 Positive Cases from the ICMR portal, provides the user interface to the Zonal Command Centres, and all field teams for action and implementation of tasks.
The outcomes of the Index Application have been analysed by the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. It was evident that the response time became quicker and delays decreased uniformly across all categories after the introduction of the Index Application, the officials added. Ms. Korlapati said the review by the then Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka T.M. Vijay Bhaskar on a daily basis was critical.
Now, with the dust having settled on the pandemic in some sense, how do the war room and bulletin hold relevance? “The relevance is in the lesson we have learnt — of comprehensive planning and not just technology. There was human and artificial intelligence involved. It’s a collaborative effort and it should happen on a day to day basis,” she said.
