With dip in calls at Health dept's helpline, work force may be shifted

Kolkata: Health department's Covid helpline numbers have seen a dip in the number of daily calls in recent time as a result the health officials are considering the idea of utilizing the man power and resources in other areas or the size of the workforce may be reduced.

A health official said that despite a surge in daily Covid cases in the past few weeks, the number of calls received by the employees through various helpline numbers dropped drastically.

It may be mentioned here that on Sunday, the state has registered 1,428 calls on telemedicine helpline number while around 488 calls received through tele-psychological counselling. Around 2,312 general queries have been addressed on Sunday.

On Saturday state received 1,497 telemedicine calls, 513 tele-psychological counselling, 2,389 general queries.

On Friday state received 1,514 telemedicine calls, 529 tele-psychological counselling, 2,418 general queries.

It may be mentioned that the number of calls on various helpline numbers were much higher during May last year when the daily Covid infection peaked. In May last year when the daily number of infected cases reached 20,000, the daily general queries used to remain over 5,000 whereas telemedicine calls remained over 2,500 per day and tele-psychological counselling over 1,200.