"URGENT PLEASE": India Turns To Twitter In Hunt For Oxygen, Hospital Beds

With India's coronavirus crisis becoming increasingly more desperate and beds, medicine and oxygen supplies scarce, people in cities across the country are relying on Twitter and the kindness of strangers for help during a time of national upheaval. About 360,000 new cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours alone.

Some are using the platform to share locations where gas cylinders, which are in limited supply, can be refilled. Others are posting details about patients in urgent need of help. Some posts advertise which hospitals have empty beds and others ask for blood plasma donors. There are tweets that offer advice on how to stay safe and others that beg for ambulances before it is too late.

"URGENT PLEASE! REQUIREMENT: ventilator urgently as hospital has no ventilator Delhi," reads one tweet flooding the platform with SOS calls.

"Okay have a very critical 30 year old patient with SpO2 level < 50, wife is pregnant. Urgently need an ICU/ventilator bed in Gurugram," reads another.

Overburdened health-care facilities and staff members also are appealing for supplies and assistance on social media.

Some on the platform are changing their Twitter usernames to indicate that they are trying to help provide resources, including phrases such as "covid support," to flag to others that they are working independently to contact hospitals and verify information.

Worried friends, partners and relatives of people with covid-19 also are using Instagram to search for help, using the hashtags #covidemergency2021 and #IndiaNeedsOxygen.

Earlier this week, Twitter's official India account warned users that while much of the information circulating was reliable some of it would not be, stressing the importance of following verified and trusted accounts.

"If you need a list of SOS resources - access to hospital beds, oxygen, food - please look at the COVID-19 SOS: Resources page. This will update in real-time as people put out their emergency tweets," the company said Monday.

Amid the heartbreaking flood of requests, came some glimmers of hope and success stories of help that arrived just in time. Others shared accounts of help that didn't arrive fast enough.

Social media influencer Janice Sequeira said Wednesday that thanks to leads on the platform she was able to find an ambulance with a functioning oxygen tank to transport a coronavirus patient.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)