A group of teenagers has launched an initiative to authenticate leads surfacing on social media to support Covid-19 patients and ensure that they reach people in need as quickly as possible.

The people driving the campaign are racing against time. Their biggest challenge is verifying if the leads — on hospital beds, oxygen suppliers and food delivery, among other things — are genuine. On most occasions, a lead gets exhausted within minutes of being posted. On some, a patient does not survive the time taken to authenticate a lead.

What started in late April as a WhatsApp group of around 20 members, many of them final year students or just ex-students of Shri Shikshayatan School has now turned into a virtual platform — called Youth Fights Covid — comprising over 200 volunteers.

The Facebook and Instagram profiles of the group are filled with posts on hospital beds, cab services, plasma donors and food delivery helplines.

On Saturday this newspaper randomly called two numbers — one of a cab service for ferrying Covid patients to hospitals and another of a food delivery service for Covid patients. Both calls were answered in the affirmative.

“We have divided our volunteers into sub groups. Each sub group is entrusted with specific subjects. One deals with hospital beds. Another deals with food delivery. Working like this improves speed and efficiency,” said Ranjini Majumdar, 18, one of the founders of the group.

“Any lead we get is verified by our volunteers before being posted. Often, that means, a lead is exhausted before we can post about it. But authenticity is sacrosanct for us,” said Ranjini, a Class XII student of Shri Shikshayatan School.

The volunteers are working in day and night shifts from their homes.

Sahil Sarkar, 25, is one of the mentors of the group. A software engineer, Sarkar is the cousin brother of one of the co-founders of the group.

“More than 100 unverified leads are generated every five minutes. They are dumped into a common pool. From there, each sub group starts filtering the leads according to the subjects they are entrusted with. The final step is posting the leads,” he said.

The most challenging job is to authenticate leads on the availability of hospital beds, the volunteers said. “It is most challenging because of the critical condition of people who need hospitalisation. Every second is crucial,” said Sarkar.

The time of generation is also posted along with the leads because the resource might get exhausted within moments of the post.

At a time the second wave of Covid-19 has pushed India’s already frail health care system beyond its limits, social media has emerged a godsend tool. Many desperate friends and family members of infected persons have resorted to sending SOS messages on social media. Many of the appeals are being answered, thanks to several grass roots virtual networks that have sprung up when governments have failed.

But as the social media is flooded with Covid-related information, many of them are false or unverified forwards. To filter useful data from the vast ocean of unverified information is priceless and it is against that backdrop that the efforts of Youth Fights Covid assumes significance. The significance is amplified when one takes into consideration that a bulk of the founders of this initiative have barely finished school.

Sreshtha Basu Roy Chowdhury. The Telegraph

Sreshtha Basu Roy Chowdhury, 19, who has completed school from Shri Shikshayatan and is preparing for NEET, is another co-founder of the group.

Sreshtha and her parents were down with Covid-19 in December 2020. Her mother needed hospitalisation. “The number of cases were on the lower side then. But we still went through a very difficult time. I can only imagine the plight of the Covid patients and their family members now, when the resources are being stretched to the extreme,” said Sreshtha.

Aatreyi Sarkar. The Telegraph

Besides sharing leads, the social media pages of Youth Fights Covid also post information of government and private sector initiatives, like a private hospital starting a Covid care facility at a stadium.

Sharanya Das Ghosh. The Telegraph

“When we started, we wanted to help in whichever way possible. We felt even helping five people would mean something. Every small step helps in such a big battle. But we had no idea that our drive would assume this scale. Complete strangers have come forward to help us. It is overwhelming,” said Aatreyi Sarkar, 17, another student of Shri Shikshayatan and one of the founders of the group.

Shramana Das Dutta. The Telegraph

Covid count

Bengal on Saturday recorded 19,436 new infections, 127 deaths and 18,243 recoveries. The number of active cases has risen to over 1.25 lakh. Of the 112 deaths, 34 were reported from Calcutta and 39 from North 24-Parganas, the two worst-hit districts in the state.