College students, teachers take burden off COVID-19 patients

A network of online warriors, mostly college students and teachers, have been lighting up the path for patients caught between panic and confusion.

Shresthashree Swain says she does not like to talk about the successes she has met while helping COVID-19 patients but that she could not resist sharing on social media this message she received from a policeman: “You are just like The Florence Nightingale, which I have read in my childhood. I pray before the god may your every wish become successful (sic).” The message came from someone she has never met: a policeman posted in Khardah, whose entire family, including elderly parents, had tested positive for COVID-19. By the time he called Ms. Swain — a part of the large army of online volunteers belonging to various colleges in West Bengal — seeking help, his mother was already dead while his father’s oxygen level had dipped to 75%. “I immediately called up Dr. Kazi Gowsas Salam, an assistant superintendent of the Calcutta Medical College, and pleaded with him to admit the father. This was last week. Now the father is better. The rest of the family was guided over the phone by my husband, who is a doctor — they have also recovered,” says Ms. Swain, a scientist posted at the chemistry department of the University of Calcutta.