GP’s famous COVID-19 video turns one with anniversary release honouring translators

It is a year on from the release of the COVID-19 home treatment video that sparked millions of views globally and a rollercoaster ride for its Auckland GP creator Sandhya Ramanathan.

Dr Ramanathan says she is celebrating the anniversary by releasing a video featuring the 14 translators and voices from Kolkata to California that made possible the dubbing of the video into 14 other languages.

Her initial Home Medical Management Plan for Mild COVID-19 was released on 14 June on YouTube and has had over half-a-million views on YouTube alone. But the compressed versions shared on WhatsApp and other platforms are thought to have been viewed by many, many more millions across the globe – but particularly in India.

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The India-born, Australian-raised GP says responding to the urgent social media demand for versions in more languages lead to a “Herculean” effort in the first six months to organise dubbed versions.

“Now when I look back I was just being driven by adrenalin.”

The video she released yesterday to mark the anniversary honours the work by translators and dubbing voices, many of them strangers she was linked to through social media followers or by “friends of friends”. Fellow Aucklanders provided nine of the dubs with the other contributors coming from California, Jordan and three from India.

The video’s success lead to the GP being interviewed in her rusty Hindi on Indian television, doing online workshops for India’s National Institute of Disaster Management and, most recently, helping launch an online medical assistance site during India’s recent second wave of the pandemic. A mental health support video she made with an extended family member also had its debut on an Indian subscriber television channel at the weekend.

Her initial 18-minute home management video tips was filmed with an iPhone while sitting cross-legged on her home study desk. She laugh now at how low-tech her video skills were but believes the simple practical advice she pulled together, including home “ventilation” tips using a balloon, a drinking straw and a pulse oximeter, is basically timeless and suitable for a range of respiratory infections.

The recent devastating second pandemic wave in India, currently on the wane, hit home with the loss of a cousin of her father, aged 55. Also the loss of a mother and aunt of one of the India-based dubbing voices.

“Some of my relatives were attending two online funerals a day, it was horrific, funerals of young people who were fit and health in their 40s or 50s.”

The ongoing impact of the second wave has prompted her to find and share resources on bereavement for people facing grief without being able to attend a funeral or even get the ashes back of their loved one.

Also, she’s sharing resources on a pandemic-related increase in mucormycosis (black fungus) infections in India that have been causing traumatic damage to people’s eyes and noses. She says the cause is thought to be multifactorial, but include widespread use of steroids, underlying diabetes and possibly the Delta variant of the virus.

Dr Ramanathan says self-doubt was the biggest barrier she had to overcome to make the video back on that Sunday night just over a year ago.

But she now thinks that maybe making the video was her destiny by bringing together all her training, life experiences and strengths in summarising and making the complex simple.

“I was just so possessed and determined that this is what I had to do.”

She says just today she received a social media message from a South African doctor thanking her for her “special gift” in delivering education and healing messages which he shares with his own patients “during these trying times”.