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Leveraging Health Helplines to Combat COVID-19 Pandemic: A Descriptive Study of Helpline Utilization for COVID-19 in Eight States of India

During a health emergency such as the current COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, immediate access to validated information is of utmost importance. Unfortunately, unverified, unreliable, and speculative information flows at an unprecedented rate in today's world, leading to an "infodemic." In such a scenario, Indian states have used telephone-based health helplines to provide an effective channel for the provision of validated, accurate, and up-to-date information. We analyzed the utilization of these helplines for providing COVID-19-related information and the profile of callers handled by these helplines across 8 states of India. These helplines received more than 6.4 million calls over a period of 6 months. The volume of calls mirrored key announcements and events taking place in India as a response to the pandemic, such as the nation-wide lockdown, extension of lockdown, and so on. Nearly three quarters of the callers belonged to the economically productive age group of 20 to 59 years. The majority of the callers were males across all 8 states. The proportion of female callers was lowest in Bihar and highest in the small, hill state of Sikkim.