The search for vaccination centres, ambulances, oxygen and other Covid-related key items has gone up across Indian cities, as infections witness an uptick. This also comes a year since the country saw the devastating second wave.

The survey carried out by Just Dial said Mumbai led the searches for vaccination centres, while Delhi witnessed a surge in Covid-related online search for pharmacies.

India, on Thursday, recorded 3,275 new Covid infections, pushing the number of active cases to 19,719 and the overall tally to 4,30,91,393, according to the Union Health Ministry data. There have been 55 fatalities; 52 of them from Kerala in a 24-hour span. The active cases constitute 0.05 per cent of the total infections, while recovery rate stood at 98.74 per cent. The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.77 per cent.

Just Dial, in its consumer insight report, said the demand for pharmacies contributed to 52 per cent of its total hits and vaccination centres 30 per cent. Search for ambulances accounted for 9.25 per cent, while Covid tests accounted for over 4 per cent of total numbers. Oxygen cylinder search made up for 2.5 per cent.

The top-10 cities that generated the search traffic include Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. Nearly 51 per cent of the searches from Tier-I cities are from Delhi and Mumbai. Bengaluru saw 40 per cent month-on-month (April vs March) jump in searches, followed by Pune and Delhi – up 24 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively.

“Besides pharmacies, over the last two years, we have also aggregated a whole lot of emergency health service providers across India’s Tier-1 and Tier-II cities,” said Prasun Kumar, CMO, Just Dial, adding that vis-à-vis the third wave, the search for oxygen cylinders remained significantly low with Delhi and Mumbai generating queries followed by Hyderabad.

“During the Omicron wave, searches for pharmacies contributed to almost 82 per cent of the total searches (were) related to healthcare; and this time around, it is 52 per cent with demand for vaccination centres and test centres going up significantly,” he told BusinessLine.

In case of Tier-II cities that include Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Indore, and Patna, Covid-related health services continued to be among the most searched. In Chandigarh, Lucknow and Jaipur, pharmacy was a dominant topic for online search. Nagpur topped the demand for vaccination centres, followed by Indore and Jaipur. Demand for ambulances in Chandigarh shot up by 36 per cent in April versus March.

Jaipur and Coimbatore saw maximum demand for Covid testing centres, followed by Chandigarh, while in Lucknow, Jaipur, and Gorakhpur, the maximum searches were for oxygen cylinders.

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