Amid the global outbreak of Covid-19, which was declared a global pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO), all the countries have started to take necessary steps to protect its people. This is expected to have long-lasting impact on the economy of the entire world.
Starting from large corporates to small and medium businesses to startups--almost all the companies are expected to record losses as a result of fall in demand and disruption in supply chain. However, perhaps the biggest impact will be on the life of people and administration of all the countries doing everything at their disposal to safeguard its nation from this pandemic.
From the end of March this year, when the country had started taking necessary steps to fight against Covid-19, Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), along with the Health Ministry of Bangladesh, emphasised the screening tools for tracking coronavirus transmission in Bangladesh. In a country where population density is 1,115.62 people per square kilometer, the importance of aggressive amount of testing was one of the top priorities.
Test Corona Today is one of the nonprofit projects by FoodQo, that is made on purpose to serve the people of Bangladesh and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh. Test Corona Today is a website that serves as an alternative of the hotline numbers to communicate with the ministry for informing an individual's health condition related to Covid-19. As the limited amount of hotline numbers are very tough to reach, Test Corona Today helps an individual to share their Covid-19 related information with the ministry and other concerned health organizations. In this way the most serious patients can be communicated as early as possible. The idea is to help the ministry to reduce the load on phone calls through sending the information related to Covid-19 of any individual. The platform asks a few selected questions related to Covid-19 and generates results based on the questions. This is followed by the result matrix provided by the ministry and required precautionary measures are also suggested.
When one clicks testcorona.today, a form appears on the screen containing very few simple 'yes' or 'no' questions. By answering those simple questions, people can get an auto update about the current condition of their health and necessary instructions required for their current condition. There are some other screening tools authorised by the government but FoodQo aims to keep it very straight with a view to providing an instant update to people. However, to make it easier, FoodQo took the approach of developing a website other than an app in order to reduce the hassle of downloading and other time-consuming issues.
This project is undertaken by a team of young entrepreneurs and their organisation named FoodQo. One of the directors and the current Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the organisation, Rafid Kader Rivu, said, "The idea was to make an effective and efficient way of screening through questions and provide responses via online platform that helps identifying cases. The answers would then be evaluated and accordingly actions will be taken."
This non-funded project went live with the collaboration of Access to Information (a2i) programme under ICT Division from March 30 this year.
The writer is a final year BBA student of Bangladesh University of Professionals. He can be reached at [email protected]
