Bellingcat's survey technology team develops tools for open source surveys and explores technology-centric research techniques. It is composed of Johanna Wild, Aiganysh Aidabekova and Logan Williams.

The coronavirus crisis in India continues to escalate, becoming one of the worst-hit countries in the world so far. The situation in the country’s capital, Delhi, is particularly dire, where hospitals are facing a shortage of medical oxygen for patients.

However, for many severely ill patients, even entering the hospital is a huge challenge. The Corona dashboard in Delhi shows that there are only 16 vacant Covid ICU beds in the nation's capital municipality, with an estimated population of 19 million.

As of 3:00 pm on April 22, 2021, India time, the Corona dashboard in Delhi showed only 16 vacant ICU beds.

In desperation, many people turn to social media sites such as Twitter to find medical resources, including hospital beds, oxygen, convalescent plasma, and monoclonal antibody therapy.

The search results for “Delhi Urgent” on Twitter contained thousands of tweets seeking Covid treatment resources. Most of these tweets request clues and information through phone numbers. Bellingcat chose not to include images of these tweets in this article

These calls for help provide a window of observation for the speed of the escalation of the crisis and the danger that Covid-19 still poses.

Tweets containing the words "delhi" and "urgent" are analyzed together with tweets containing the word "oxygen" and visualized between March and April 2021. The tweets were captured with TWINT and drawn with Python.

In March, on average, only 5 tweets per day (excluding retweets) contained the keywords "Delhi" and "Urgent". By April 21, this number had increased to more than 400, and a new request for help was sent every 24 seconds in the middle of the night on April 22. These requests indicate that the percentage of oxygen needed also increased sharply on April 22.

Although India has also dealt with a major coronavirus wave in 2020, the social media data of that period shows that the current crisis is much more serious than it is now.

Between July 2020 and April 2021, tweets containing the words "Delhi" and "emergency" were analyzed together with tweets containing the word "oxygen". The tweets were captured with TWINT and drawn with Python.

By using the open source tool TWINT to analyze these Twitter patterns, use the command twint -s “delhi Emergency” -o tweets.csv to collect tweets that match a specific search query (in this case, “delhi Emergency”) into a CSV file – The .csv file is then grouped by date and plotted with Python.

The results of different search queries, namely tweets containing "patient" and "urgent", show very similar patterns. (Bellingcat also tried to search for related terms in Hindi, but found fewer results.)

Between March 2021 and April 2021, tweets containing the words "patient" and "urgent" were analyzed together with tweets containing the word "oxygen". The tweets were captured with TWINT and drawn with Python.

Most (but not all) of these tweets are from India, and a large part of them are from the Delhi metropolitan area. This ratio is not only due to the severity of the Delhi crisis, but also possibly due to other conditions necessary for the dissemination of information through social media such as mobile devices and Internet access. According to a 2019 report by Nielsen, Delhi’s Internet penetration rate is the highest among all cities in India, at 69%.

Many tweets that match these keywords also contain the name of the patient’s city. In addition to Delhi, the suburbs of Noida and small cities such as Lucknow and Indore are also representative.

In India, a vast and diverse country with a population of more than 1 billion, many people lack the resources to seek help on Twitter or other social media platforms. People with higher education and high income must have too many people on Twitter. They are also more likely to have English language skills. Therefore, these posts are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the severity of the crisis in India. Other popular platforms include local players such as Facebook, Instagram, Koo, and closed messaging platform WhatsApp. Of course, countless emergencies and desperate searches have occurred entirely outside of social media.

Using Twitter geocoding search, you can determine the number of tweets in a particular city. For example, the search term "emergency geocoding: 26.855228,80.932529,50km" will find tweets sent from locations within 50 kilometers of Lucknow. These advanced search parameters can also be used with TWINT to extract tweets into CSV, for example twint -s "urgent geocode:26.855228,80.932529,50km" -o luckynow.csv -csv. It’s important to note that this does not mean that the tweet is about patients in the area-for example, the family of someone living in Mumbai may be tweeting from Delhi.

A sample tweet returned when performing a geolocation search on the surrounding area of ​​Lucknow.

Searching for tweets in this way and analyzing the number of multiple cities reveals the broad but not universal nature of the current crisis. On April 14, transaction volumes in all cities began to increase dramatically. Although the Delhi area has the highest transaction volume, Bangalore, Hyderabad, especially the small cities of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India, are also quite high. Lucknow, Delhi and Bhopal also have a large proportion The tweet contains the keyword "oxygen".

In contrast, Chennai, an extremely densely populated city, has a relatively small number of tweets, which may indicate a certain degree of isolation from the crisis.

Between March 2021 and April 2021, tweets containing the word "urgent" from users from various cities in India were analyzed together with tweets containing the word "oxygen". The tweets were captured with TWINT and drawn with Python.

The language of the tweet body usually indicates the relationship with the patient, bringing the crisis to the personal level. Some of the most common keywords in these tweets are "father," "mother," and "friend."

In addition, many of these tweets contain sensitive personal information, including phone numbers and medical information. In crisis situations, more urgent needs overwhelm the desire for privacy. However, processing this data may pose challenges to social media platforms such as Twitter. Will this personal data remain indexed and searched in the next few years? Have these users indicated that they are in a vulnerable position based on the nature of their posts, and will they face a greater risk of fraud or harassment because of the use of these data? The use of social media platforms in crisis situations poses a daunting challenge to protecting personal privacy, and there is no obvious solution.

Indians also turn to Google for help for themselves or their loved ones. Although the most successful search terms on Google in India in late March 2021 and April 2021 are still related to cricket matches, data shows that starting from mid-April, specific search terms related to Covid-19 have been used rapidly Increase. Similar to Twitter, since April 14th, the frequency of people searching for the keyword "oxygen" has risen rapidly.

The first search query related to "oxygen" was "rental oxygen cylinder". People are also trying to find information on how to buy oxygen or oxygen generators and "how to make oxygen at home". Others want to know how to check the oxygen level of the patient themselves and what is the normal oxygen concentration level.

Almost all of the top 25 search queries on Google Trends lack specific information about their percentage growth compared to the past period. On the contrary, Google just added the word "breakthrough" next to them, indicating that it has grown by more than 5000%, which is very strong.

There has indeed been a breakthrough in search queries related to "ventilators." Since mid-April, the term has become increasingly relevant to Google users. People who are interested in this term also want to find out "the difference between a ventilator and oxygen", perhaps to help themselves or relatives and friends who are infected with Covid-19. Another term that has seen a significant increase in search queries is "a ventilator hospital near me". As the number of available beds and resources decreases, the search becomes more and more difficult.

As the second year of the coronavirus pandemic begins, many people, especially in the United States and Europe, where vaccination is relatively good, have become accustomed to coronavirus statistics and record-breaking total cases. Internet appeals across India not only prove the seriousness of the crisis, but also personalize the crisis by focusing on individual struggles for assistance — a powerful reminder that the coronavirus will continue to exist in 2021, and it is just as deadly.

Logan Williams and Johanna Wild are the researchers on this story.

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