It has become quite apparent over the past months that the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic is a collective one. India’s students are also putting in their best and cannot be left out of this massive community effort to save lives when the government is unable to step up. In an effort to combat the lack of resources across the country, undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Universal Business School in Mumbai have come up with a COVID resource tracker to share verified and crucial leads.
The tracker, created by seven students at the institute, includes updated information on plasma donations, oxygen tanks and availability of hospital beds in 13 pandemic-hit states across India. These states include Maharashtra, Delhi/NCR, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab/Chandigarh, Gujarat, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Rajasthan and Karnataka.
They also have 18 volunteers who are helping them get all the information for the tracker from various states. The students began developing the project at the beginning of this month and within two weeks they have had over 1,00,000 views on the tracker and over 1000 people have accessed information available on the portal. The portal has been made using Linktr.ee, a website creation platform.
"One can access all the 13 states through separate links on the tracker, once you click on a specific state, it will open a spreadsheet with all the information on oxygen cylinders, hospitals beds and all kinds of resources. We are planning to add a few more crucial elements to this tracker soon. We are also collaborating with another organisation that is helping us create a mobile app that will be easier to access. We have plans to launch the app within 4-5 days' time, " says Sudharma Kambhamettu, an MBA student at UBS, who is a part of the team that made the tracker. The students are also trying to get contacts from other states and will then update the tracker accordingly.
This information is corroborated and updated by a network of sources every 24 hours by the team. People can access the information by going through the link or scanning the QR code available on UBS’s various social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. "Our objective behind starting the tracker is to help those who don't have easy access to such crucial information. They can now access verified sources such as contact details and addresses of oxygen tank distributors, plasma donors and COVID hospitals with available beds, through this platform," added Dr Asha Bhatia, Head-Research and Faculty in charge of ENACTUS at UBS, Mumbai. ENACTUS is a social enterprise and global experiential learning programme at UBS, which the students are also a part of.
