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As India continues to battle the raging second COVID-19 wave, there has been a groundswell of support from corporates, organisations, startups, institutes, and individuals keen to do their bit. Technology and innovations have taken centre stage amid a rush to build apps and services that can help afflicted people.

Web app CovRelief is one such effort.

The non-profit app, launched by IIT Delhi alumni to help the families of COVID-19 patients with verified leads on various resources, provides live tracking of vacant beds, oxygen availability, plasma, food, and videos by renowned doctors, helpline information, and more.

The app which has seem to go live during the second wave of Covid-19 in India,  has been developed by Milan Roy, Swapnil Sharma, and Pranit Ganvir. Milan is also the Co-founder of Edvicer, a comparison and discovery platform for online courses, jobs, internships, and projects for college students and professionals.

Let’s get started

The app is easy to get started with. The web app (covidrelief.glideapp.io) can be used directly and does not need to be downloaded from app stores such as Google Play or Apple’s app store.

Developed quickly to help COVID patients and their family, the user interface (UI) is straightforward and simple.

The home screen has nine tabs, including live oxygen leads, vacant bed tracker, donate/request plasma, food, resource list, helpline number, and city stress meter (which shows which city has lesser number of beds/resources as against demand). The cities include are Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Almora, Bhopal, Haridwar, Jabalpur, Kota, Nagpur, Raipur and many others.

The app also has a Need Help tab in case your concern is not listed. This tab helps you connect with the CovRelief team on social media. CovRelief’s team includes a bunch of volunteers, and the app has also collaborated with Covid Survivor Force India (CFSI) to connect people in need of CFSI’s volunteer work. 

Give and find help

If you are looking for a bed, you need to click the ‘Vacant bed tracker’, and the app will bring up cities. We clicked on Delhi, and the app showed a real-time list of beds available hospital-wise. If you do not find what you need, you can click ‘ask for help’ or ‘live Twitter leads’. The former lets you create a post for your requirement while the latter takes you to the microblogging site Twitter for latest leads on your requirement. The other tabs work similarly.

The Resource list tab on the app has all the help you may need, city-wise, including medicine providers. Explainer videos by renowned doctors such as Dr Naresh Trehan and Dr Randeep Guleria are also available.

In the plasma tab, you can list yourself as a donor or put out a request for plasma.

However, the developers have advised users to exercise caution and verify the leads provided on the platform. They can also write to milan@edvicer.com to provide any feedback.

The verdict

The app is helpful to monitor this fast-evolving situation and track resources real time. All information displayed on the app has been taken from government websites, and is verified – this is extremely helpful in times of information overload.

CovRelief also seems useful to look for the latest leads on social media and do an organised search of whatever you may need in the time of coronavirus.

We recommend that you use the app if you or anyone you know is affected by COVID-19 and are not able to find anything from your immediate network.

However, we truly hope you do not need to use the app! Stay safe and break the chain.