Last month, the government created an online data pool of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, volunteers, ex-servicemen for ground-level administration at the state, district or municipal levels.
The information has been uploaded on a dashboard that is regularly updated, a press release said. A joint letter was sent by the Secretary MSME, Arun Kumar Panda, the Chairman Empowered Group-4 on human resource, and the Secretary DoPT to all chief secretaries, Dr C Chandramouli.
The release stated a dashboard master database of details of healthcare professionals and volunteers has been made operational. It contains a state-wise and district-wise availability of the large pool of human resources from various groups.
Also, it includes contact details of the nodal officers. The website states that the dashboard is available for use by various authorities to prepare for crisis management and contingency plans based on the available manpower, in coordination with nodal officers for each group.
This database can also be used to utilise the services of volunteers for enforcing social distancing at banks, ration shops, mandis and for providing help to elderly and orphanages. This will also help states and union territories to move human resources from one location to the other for their utilisation.
The release added that it calls for use of iGOT online training modules mounted on a special digital platform-Integrated Government Online Training(iGOT) portal for the training and capacity building of doctors, nurses, paramedics, hygiene workers, technicians, staff, and other frontline workers and volunteers.
This platform provides anytime onsite delivery of training material or modules through any devices, such as mobiles, laptops, and desktops. Already 44 modules, which are part of 12 courses, have been onboarded with 105 videos and 29 documents.
The release noted that some of these courses include the basics of COVID-19, infection prevention and control, how to use PPE, quarantine and isolation, the management of COVID-19 cases(SARI, ADRS, septic shock), laboratory sample collection and testing, and ICU care and ventilation management.
Further, similar modules are being uploaded every day. The government has urged the state, district, and local bodies to train the identified resource through the portal on an urgent basis.
Earlier, the government constituted 11 empowered groups to formulate plans and provide solutions to address the challenges of COVID-19 outbreak in the country. Empowered Group -4 headed by Dr Panda, Secretary, MSME has been mandated with identification of human resources for various COVID-19-related activities, along with the necessary capacity building for them.
Pune, a city in India, recently launched a mobile application to track home-quarantined citizens and ensure they are staying at home, under the Smart Cities Mission.
The city administration has taken steps, through the use of technology solutions, to monitor home quarantined citizens. The city administration has appointed dedicated teams for five zones to conduct a follow-up with people under home quarantine on a daily basis.
The Smart Cities Mission, which was launched in 2016, aims to transform 100 cities into smart cities by 2020.
The teams will check on people who have recently returned from international trips and those discharged after treatment for COVID-19. Accordingly, the teams will seek updates from quarantined people on their health status and details of persons in contact with them. For persons sporting the home quarantine stamp, the teams will check if separate food, bed, utensils, clothes and washrooms are provided to them.