Bhubaneswar, May 19: Taking the level of care-giving to a next step during the second wave of the COVID pandemic the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to categorize patients under home isolation into two types. While the home isolation patients with no or mild symptoms of COVID are called Green Flag cases, the moderately-affected ones are termed as Red Flag patients.

In order to know the health status of the Red Flag patients, BMC Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Singh has directed to make calls every day to the patients for three days at a stretch, so that their health monitoring could be done effectively and efficiently.

The call center executives, manning the outbound call stations at the 1929 24X7 Call Centre situated inside the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) office, has already started calling the home isolation patients under the Red Flag category since last evening. Yesterday 22 Red Flag patients were called and their health status was noted.

The Red Flag patients’ list is prepared after going through the inputs of the Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) at the zonal level. RRT teams include experienced doctors.

As the civic body is now divided into three administrative zones for achieving better citizen-centric service delivery goal, the list from the respective Zonal Deputy Commissioner’s office is being prepared by a senior official deployed for monitoring the COVID situation. After receiving the list, the executives at 1929 24X7 Call Centre in BSCL office contact the Red Flag or moderately-affected patients, to know their health status.

With this categorization of home isolation patients, following the visits of RRT teams and through the help of 1929 24X7 Call Centre, BMC is now able to monitor the health parametres of the moderately-affected COVID patients staying at their home, so that when needed, their hospital shifting could be easier.

Secondly, through this innovative exercise the moderately-affected patients, in case of any urgent development, could have a conversation with the doctors available at the 1929 24X7 Call Center. Now, while 7 doctors are available at 1929 24X7 Call Centre during the morning and afternoon shifts, during the night shift 4 doctors are available.