The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic saw thousands of people ask for help sourcing beds, oxygen, medicines and other life-saving facilities on Twitter. This included hospitals, who put out SOS calls on Twitter as well. In a post on Wednesday, Twitter said in its analysis, tweets around seeking or providing medical help increased by 1958%, or were roughly up by 20 times.
Twitter said it identified, analysed and compared COVID-19 tweets sent out during the second wave (April 1 - May 31, 2021) with tweets from the months preceding it (February 1- March 31, 2021). “Tweets on COVID-19 grew manifold during April 1 - May 31, 2021, and the service witnessed 100% growth in COVID-19 conversations compared with the previous two months (February 1 - March 31),” Twitter said.
It was during this analysis that the company found that tweets seeking or providing medical help had increased by 20 times. “#Covid19 was tweeted 77% more during the second wave, #Blood was tweeted 72% more as compared to the Feb-March period, #Plasma saw an 834% increase and #SOS was tweeted 152% more during this time,” it said. It added that the volume of replies between those seeking help and volunteers coordinating efforts saw replies go up by 1.5 times. When vaccination was expanded, Twitter said that tweets around vaccine and vaccination were up by 246%.
Fundraising conversations went up by 731% (8x) during the period, it said, adding that Australian cricketer Pat Cummins’s tweet announcing his monetary support to India was the most liked and retweeted tweet during this period.
Twitter added that with official government accounts, health professionals, and epidemiologists on the service, people leveraged it to find information on the latest developments "They Tweeted with hashtags - #CoronavirusUpdates, #CoronaIndiaUpdate, #Covid19IndiaResources, among others - amping up conversations by 916% (10x)," it said.
Mental health too, Twitter said, saw a 153% increase, or nearly 2.5 times increase in conversation during the period.
“People Tweeted with hashtags such as #DoctorsMentalhealth, #CovidCounselling, #CovidDepression, #CovidInsomnia, among many others. Prayer or hope emerged as the dominant sentiment with the folded hands being the most Tweeted emoji,” it said.