Mumbai, India – Till the end of last month, 27-year-old Ashish Avhad had to field non-stop telephone calls from COVID patients seeking beds, ambulances and guidance on home isolation.
Avhad works as a telephone operator in one of the 24 COVID response “war rooms” in India’s financial capital Mumbai, home to more than 12.5 million people, in the western state of Maharashtra.
As the city was swept by a raging second wave of the virus and cases peaked in April, Avhad remembers handling more than 100 calls a day during his eight-hour shift.
“Every second call would be a distress call,” said Avhad, a civil engineer who became a telephone operator after losing his job in the pandemic.