With coronavirus hitting India, Google Maps started showing locations for food shelters in Delhi. Now, the company has announced that it has expanded the feature to include night shelters as well and is also expanding this to 30 more cities.
Anal Ghosh, Sr. Program Manager, Google India, said: “As the COVID-19 situation develops, we are making a concerted effort to build solutions that help people during these times of need. Highlighting the locations of food and night shelters on Google Maps is a step to make this information easily available to the users in need, and ensure they can avail the food and shelter services being provided by the government authorities.”
Also, the feature is no longer limited to Google Maps only but is also available on Google Search and Google Assistant. Users can simply search for Food Shelters or Night Shelters on these Google products and they will get results.
Currently, it provides results in English language but the company says that it has plans to make it available in Hindi as well. Google will also add features like quick-access shortcuts that will appear beneath the search bar on the Google Maps app.
With India going under lockdown with any prior notice for 21 days, it resulted in a massive migrant crisis as millions of daily wage labourers started going home as they were out of work and without access to food. Thus, the state governments across the country planned food shelters and night shelters as a part of relief efforts.
