The Greater Chennai Corporation will soon be hiring and expanding its team of virtual volunteers to help COVID-19 patients under home isolation.
Corporation Joint Commissioner (Health) Alby John Varghese said around 22,000 persons, who were under home isolation in the 15 zones of the city, will get assistance by means of this initiative. The volunteers will establish personal contact with the patients, ring them up on a daily basis to provide them with medical and psychological assistance during home isolation.
“We are hiring 100 virtual volunteers. They will start work from Thursday. The persons under home isolation will be contacted on a daily basis. Whenever there is an issue the patients can call us back also. The virtual volunteers will be tied up with our tele-counselling centre,” Dr. Varghese said.
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The volunteers at the tele-counseling centre in Ripon Buildings are helping 2,000 persons every day. Loyola College Social Work associate professor Gladston Xavier said an app had been developed for the virtual volunteers to work from home in order to assist at least 10,000 COVID-19 patients daily. The existing team of virtual volunteers would include 60 social workers and 40 psychologists. Training was under way.
The number of virtual volunteers will be increased to 200 after a few days. After this, 20, 000 patients will be covered daily. The volunteers will also give information to FOCUS volunteers, who will visit patients who are in need of emergency assistance.
At present, 897 streets have reported more than six COVID-19 cases.
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