Ikponmwosa Gabriel Ebengho
400L, Medicine & Surgery
University of Ibadan
As Nigeria approaches 4000 total confirmed cases of COVID-19 with some 107 deaths presently, there is not much flattening of the curve going on within her borders. While these numbers are lower than those of some European countries, major concerns are that not enough tests have been carried out in Nigeria leading to underreporting what actually is. Nevertheless, some remain optimistic and thank the climate for causing a reduction in the spread of the novel coronavirus, while others blame 5G technology.
With almost two months of lockdown, school children and young adults have been unable to socialise with their friends, means of daily income have been terminated and hunger and poverty are more widespread. As the stress of being confined to our homes accumulate and cause increasing frustration, technology may be the one tool to hasten our recovery by actively monitoring and tracking the disease.
In Ghana, Zipline, an American medical product delivery company that designs, builds, and operates drone aircraft and headquartered in South San Francisco, California, uses drones to fly samples for testing from over 1000 health facilities in rural Ghana to testing sites in Accra and Kumasi. This started on April 17, 2020, when they flew 51 samples from Omenako Drone Distribution Centre to Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Accra.
Keller Rinaudo, Zipline’s CEO, said: “Zipline wants to help Ghana in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of this contactless drone delivery in transporting COVID-19 test samples will boost the government response to the pandemic and help more lives faster”. Before the use of drones, Ghana relied heavily on truck delivery which took a lot of time because of distance and road traffic. This limited the number of samples that could be tested. Now, with drones that can fly 70 miles/116km in one round trip, testing centres receive samples within hours and so many more tests are run in record time.
Again, in Ghana, a software engineering company, Cognate Systems, uses technology to track coronavirus symptoms and hotspots. They utilise a platform called Opine Health Assistant to record and track the frequency of coronavirus symptoms like cough and high temperature in different parts of the country.
The Opine Health Assistant, launched March 26, 2020, collects information from residents about their location and possible coronavirus symptoms through a USSD short code, says Kwabena Nuamah, co-founder of Cognate Systems. To use the platform, one has to dial *920*222# or *714*444# on their mobile phones and then follow the prompts to answer questions about symptoms and other risk factors. It also asks if they need essential supplies such as food and shelter in the wake of the pandemic. All this comes at no cost to the users and they can make use of it on any mobile device they have, even without credit.
According to Nuamah, the data collected is shared with public health experts, data scientists, relief providers, and disease surveillance teams who are better suited to understand the information and can use it to provide local solutions to coronavirus. Opine Health Assistant has to be able to predict early cases of COVID-19 in the eastern region of Ghana. With the tool, he said, experts and disease surveillance agencies in Ghana can start preparing to contain the coronavirus disease before it hits a particular region.
Part of the data collected at the point of filling the form generated by the USSD code is where a person lives and their need for essentials like food and shelter. The locations of people who might need food or shelter are passed on to relief providers who are in their databases, like churches and NGOs. “If a person says he is in Accra, for example, and needs food, we share this information with relief providers in Accra so they can identify people in that region and match them with supplies”, he added.
Other countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, have already used smartphone-based tracking capabilities, with good success, to monitor citizens on home quarantine as well as to identify potential contacts. Google and Apple have recently announced a collaboration to use Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) from our smartphones to enhance contact tracing abilities of public health authorities. The interesting part of this project is that Bluetooth LE could allow our phones to perform digital contact tracing during our everyday activities.
Take the example of Doug and Stacy. These two strangers sit down at opposite ends of a park bench to feed the pigeons and have a nice chat. Several days later, Doug begins to cough and is found to have COVID-19. Doug cannot remember the name of the nice lady with whom he chatted in the park, but using Bluetooth LE logs, public health authorities use a program to access a list of the devices his smartphone has come into contact and notify their owners, including Stacy.
At the time of writing this, May 8, 2020, Nigeria has carried out 22,492 tests and recorded 117 deaths out of 3,912 confirmed cases while Ghana has carried out 137,924 tests and recorded 18 deaths out of 3,091 confirmed cases. Of course, we do not have to use the exact same methods that these countries have employed, but instead of blaming 5G technology, we can use it to save lives now!
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