The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has launched Twitter Seva to help people with their health-related queries.

Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, announced the dedicated account – @CovidIndiaSeva – with a tweet on Tuesday.

A press release by Twitter India said that this public service is aimed at enabling transparent e-governance delivery in real-time, and will allow the ministry to communicate effectively and at scale with the public, especially in crisis situations such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Twitter Seva is a customised live query redressal service. It works on a dashboard that helps process large volumes of tweets, converts them into resolvable tickets, and assigns them to the relevant authority for real-time resolution.

Quoting Harsh Vardhan, the release said Twitter Seva is powered by a team of experts who are trained and equipped to treat and respond to each query uniquely, and at scale. “This will enable us in establishing a direct channel with Indian citizens, connecting with them in real-time to provide the authoritative health and public information,” he said.

The release said the dedicated account will provide updates on measures taken by the government, information on access to healthcare services, and empower the public to reach out to the authorities. People can get their queries answered by tweeting to @CovidIndiaSeva.

The service’s compatibility and usage across the Indian languages will enable the ministry communicate with people from all parts of India, it said.