Social media is buzzing with COVID-19 resources and helplines, but one has to properly filter out them to find the right ones. Here’s how you can find help for COVID-19 patients through Twitter.
New Delhi: Amid a massive surge in coronavirus cases due to the second wave of COVID-19 in India, there is a high demand for beds, medical oxygen, medicines and plasma donors, especially in badly hit states like Delhi where hospitals are overflowing with COVID patients and running short on oxygen.
While many helplines and websites have been provided by state governments for such use, there are many independent organisations that are offering help such as food for home isolating COVID patients and oxygen cylinder refill or to find hospital beds
Social media is buzzing with COVID-19 resources and helplines, but one has to properly filter out them to find the right ones. Here’s how you can find help for COVID-19 patients through Twitter where netizens are helping each other.
Twitter allows users to use the advanced search function that lets users search for tweets containing specific keywords, phrases, hashtags, a specific language, geographic location, date, and a specific Twitter handle or person. Users can search for these things using Search Operators to find exactly what they need.
Here’s how to use search filters on Twitter:
- There is a basic search where you search words in the search bar on Twitter and all the tweets containing those words. For example if you searched for oxygen cylinder in Delhi, Twitter will show you all the tweets with those words but they might not be in that specific order.
- In advanced search, you have to use double quotes and some other characters. If you search words like “Hospital beds in Delhi”, “oxygen bed” or “SOS Delhi” in quotes, Twitter search will show you all tweets with those words in that particular order.
- To find tweets posted from a specific state, city, you can type “Hospital beds” near:”Delhi” (With colon and double quotes), and to see all tweets from the specific area in a city or state, type near:Delhi within:15mi (without space) in the search bar.
- Twitter users are mostly using hashtags such as #COVIDSOS, #CovidResources, #COVIDHelp, etc. these days to share helpline numbers, websites and other important information. You can search for any specific hashtag and location, for example – “#COVIDSOS” near:”Delhi”. You’ll be shown the top tweets automatically, if you want to find out the latest information click on Latest under the search bar.
