COVIDSOS: Live ChatBot helps you find verified leads on Twitter for Covid-related Emergencies

The second wave of COVID 19 has hit the entire nation hard. Unlike last time, the saddest part is the unavailability of medical help in the form of oxygen cylinders, ICU beds and ventilators. Many people are trying to help through social media by circulating information, but this gives rise to a problem - authenticity. Users are unable to find verified information leading to critical time waste.

Among several initiatives, this one stood out. An Engineer at Intel has launched a dedicated website to provide verified COVID-19 leads on Oxygen Cylinders, Ventilators, Hospital Beds, ICUs, Plasma availability and Others. It curates information on Twitter for the keywords that you have entered.

How to use the Covid SOS ChatBot?

When you click on the covidsos.live link, it will directly take you to a chatbot. The page will ask some questions in both Hindi and English, beginning with "Welcome to the COVID-19 Resources page. The goal of this app is to curate the relevant post". This follows by the question - "What do you need help with?"

Currently, the options for help include Vaccination, Food, Oxygen Concentrator, Medicine, Plasma, Ventilator, Beds and ICU. When you click on the kind of emergency you are facing, it will take you to a pop-up. It asks you Enter the city where you need help. After you enter the city name, it asks whether you want to go to Twitter. Once it takes you to Twitter, click on the "Latest" tab there.

For example, when you choose Oxygen Concentrator on the page, enter Delhi in the city, it will take you to Twitter that will look like this.

Since the bot has been only recently developed, the responses are set to the above options only. Taking to Twitter, Mashrin Srivastava, who developed the chatbot stated, "Built this app to dynamically curate the essential resources from the most helpful/verified posts. I am constantly improving the app based on user interactions."