Chennai's Virtual Warriors Save Hundreds of Lives During Pandemic

The Covid survivors virtually help other patients and their families every day by sharing verified information on availability of beds, oxygen, ambulance, medicine, oxygen concentrators.

From their Chennai home, sisters Grace Priyadarshini Emmanuel, an IAS aspirant, and Preethi Esther Emmanuel, an architect, both Covid survivors, are virtually helping other patients and their families every day.  They share verified information on availability of beds, oxygen, ambulance, medicine, oxygen concentrators and even food on their Instagram pages. The siblings work 18 hours a day, glued to their devices, talking on their phones or texting those in need of help or hospitals and service providers.  Their timely leads, they say, have helped several thousands of patients as the messages were shared and went viral when cases in Tamil Nadu peaked amid the second wave, with acute shortage of oxygen and beds. The sisters lost their maternal grandparents to Covid after five members in their family, including their mother Pamila Emmanuel, contracted the virus. It was then the family, just like thousands of others, faced the ground reality of shortage of beds and oxygen facilities and struggled without leads that led to wastage of time.