women covid warriors have been instrumental in karnatakas war against coronavirus these range from women holding key positions in the administration to countless ordinary citizens meet some women warriors who have been taking every challenge headon for each one of us in the third wavespeaking to toi 23yearold chandana a swab collector attached to kodihalli primary health centre says she has been living alone away from her mother who lives in the same city due to fear of infecting heri collect swabs of strangers and with the omicron variant spreading lightning fast i do not want to risk infecting my parents she says her father works in mysuruchandana also works for the mobile units run by the bruhat bengaluru mahanagara palike bbmp we start work in the morning and it goes on till 3pm we get a lunch break in between and thats when we use the toilets she saysit is a kind of social work that we do we cant complain she quips when asked if its difficult working in the mobile unitsdr sisira raj an epidemiologist working at bbmp war room says although cases are rising and workload is increasing she doesnt feel as stressed as she used to be in the second wave omicron variant has less hospitalisation rate even in hospitalisation cases at least 80 of patients are going to general beds and very few cases require intensive care she saysspeaking about an average workday sisira says she leaves home before 10am and returns by 9 30pm but that doesnt mean the work quite ends there she says after dinner i sit with the laptop again till late night and sometimes i wake up as early as 2am and get back to work she adds sisira lives with her husband and their 5yearold childmy husband helps with the kid and other daily chores like cooking she saysher work involves monitoring the covid19 data including testing positive cases clusters hospitalisations among others she coordinates with primary health centres staterun hospitals and private facilities in her zone to compile data related to covid cases she also pays field visits to monitor spread within clusters of cases in yelahanka zonedr prajna hunses day begins at 5 30am she has to finish her daily chores before sitting with her younger son for the latters online classesprajna who is attached to kumaraswamy layout primary health centre says the workload has increased in the last couple of weeks around 80 of the work currently is covidrelated she sayscompared to the second wave we are seeing a rapid increase in the number of cases the doubling time is less than 24 hours but the severity is less vaccination also plays an important role as most of these people getting infected have received both jabs only those with comorbidities or diabetesassociated complications malignancy are being hospitalised she saideveryone i know is getting infected in this wave unlike the first two including my coworkers despite all precautions and these are people who spend most of