Mumbai: At BMC helpline, tackling flood of panicked calls, offering calm advice

Each person in the control room has a copy of the guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ministry of Health, and a copy of the directives from the Mumbai Municipal Commissioner to assist in answering the calls.




It’s 3 pm on Tuesday, March 17. The state government has not declared a lockdown yet, and local trains are still running. But there are rumours and speculation on social and other media that a shut down is imminent. In the control room of Mumbai’s disaster management at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation headquarters, where 10 operators are continuously fielding queries from worried callers about COVID-19, as Information Officer Suresh Deshmukh begins his shift, the first caller is a worried woman in her 40s, demanding to know how she will travel to work.

“How will I commute to work from Panvel station to my office in Andheri?” she asks, providing the control room with information that she is part of the housekeeping staff. “I don’t have work from home.”

Deshmukh is prepared for the question. Just as he arrived for his shift, signed the attendance muster and took his seat. “breaking news” on one of the four television sets mounted on the walls of the state-of-the-art control room said many long distance trains from Mumbai have been cancelled till March 31.

“News channels have started flashing ‘local trains to be cancelled?’ People don’t see the question mark at the end…They will be confused now,” Deshmukh says.

He asks the caller to calm down and then explains to her that only long distance trains had been cancelled. He asks her not to travel unless necessary. Deskhmukh puts in the details of the call in the register and says, “People are panicking. My job is not only to give them information, but also to tell them they have support, and to calm them down.”

Deshmukh and his colleagues, both men and women, wear blue uniforms and masks. Earlier, they would get calls on a range of civic issue, from garbage disposal to encroachment. But from the time of the first positive case of COVID-19 in Maharashtra on March 9, the nature of the calls at the disaster management cell has changed.

Between March 6 and 17, the disaster control room attended 446 calls related to coronavirus. Of these, 241 were related to general information on the virus, while the remaining 205 were complaints about cough and cold. On an average, 30-40 calls are received per day, most from those with travel history or travel plans.

After listening to the queries, the call operators take down the details – name, mobile number and address. In a few cases, the staff has also called back citizens to follow up and make sure their queries are resolved.

As part of the training given to BMC staff to handle COVID-19 queries, Deshmukh and his colleagues visited Kasturba hospital, the city’s main centre for treating and testing the virus, on March 5. Each person in the control room has a copy of the guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ministry of Health, and a copy of the directives from the Mumbai Municipal Commissioner to assist in answering the calls.

Deshmukh recalls how that visit to Kasturba proved helpful. “I directed a couple on call who were at Kasturba to get tests done. They were overwhelmed by the crowd at the hospital and were unable to find the OPD and testing centre, I could direct them on how to get there.”

From March 6, the BMC also decided to station a doctor in the disaster control room to attend to the queries. To assist citizens’ query, resident doctors from civic-run hospitals are also stationed in three shifts – 7 am to 3 pm, 3 pm to 11 pm and night shift from 11 pm to 7 am.

As he is speaking, Deshmukh turns to answer another call, this time from a resident in Chembur in Mumbai’s eastern suburbs. The caller, a man, is worried as his mother, who is in her late 60s, has had dry cough and a fever for five days, and wants to know the procedure for COVID-19 tests. The man demands to speak to a doctor. Deshmukh tries to get the caller’s details and give advice, however, when the caller insists on speaking to a doctor, Deshmukh transfers his call to the one on duty.

The calls keep coming. Mostly, people want information on the symptoms of the virus, screening at the airport, demanding the coronavirus infection tests to be done for senior citizens and asking what home-quarantine is. The panic is apparent.

Dr Rohit Pandey, resident doctor at KEM, has been attending many of these calls. Some have even asked for his personal contact details and one-on-one consultation. At 6 pm, he gets a harrowed call. The caller says, “I have come in contact with a colleague who travelled to Dubai three days back. What should I do? Should I get tested for coronavirus? My boss has asked my colleague to return home and not step out for 14 days. Can we force people to do that?”

Another caller, a senior citizen, said he overheard a BEST conductor complaining about fever. He asked the conductor to be put on compulsory leave.

The next caller sounds distressed and demands Deshmukh send a BMC team to his housing society in western suburbs as he suspects a traveller is COVID-19 positive. Deshmukh says such calls are most difficult to handle. “Because of panic, fear, misinformation, everyone who sneezes comes under the radar of doubt. We try and make the caller understand the difference between symptoms of the common flu and the virus. In some cases, people are also complaining about travellers who are defying home quarantine, details of the same are then shared with medical officers of health at ward levels, who then visit the area to check.”

Officers in the control room highlight that every fourth caller wants to get tested for coronavirus. Dr Pandit recalls that a senior citizen wanted to know if he could get himself tested at his neighbourhood lab. “When I informed him that they don’t have permission or the infrastructure to do so, he asked me to put in a request from his end with the authorities. Many others also demanded that home service should be started to that a suspected case doesn’t travel, infecting others.”

At present, only Kasturba and KEM hospitals in Mumbai have a testing centre, with two other civic run hospitals and six other private labs waiting for approval from the Centre.

Deshmukh, who travels to Panvel, which takes over an hour from BMC headquarters, signs off at 11.20 pm, with advice to everyone in the room to wash their hands properly to fight coronavirus.

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