It has been a traumatic summer for healthcare providers across India, with the country grappling with Covid 2.0. And it was no different for home healthcare services company Portea Medical. "This period of combating the pandemic and creating solutions that could benefit the masses, has been emotionally challenging and physically draining," says Meena Ganesh, MD, co-founder and chairperson, Portea Medical, which provided care to over 4,00,000 Covid patients across the country, including home isolation services to more than 3,00,000 since the first wave of the pandemic last year. The company delivered over 2.5 lakh doctor consultations and more than 1.2 million follow-up calls to coronavirus patients in isolation. It also set up isolation and treatment centres at hotels for Covid patients to deal with the acute shortage of hospital beds and intensive care units (ICUs) during the second wave of the pandemic earlier this year, besides expanding its range of services, including dialysis and chemotherapy. It is currently operational in 29 cities. — Debojyoti Ghosh