Returning to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) from Da Nang City in the sensitive period of new Covid-19 case discovery, Mr. H.T. said that he immediately used the app NCOVI to declare his health status and is now undergoing the self-quarantine time at home in accordance with directions of the local authorities.
The app NCOVI does play its essential role in allowing users to timely and conveniently declare their health status after coming back from disease-affected areas. This helps the health department to find suspected cases quickly for a more active pandemic prevention.
Statistics reveal that the total number of NCOVI download has reached 7.2 million so far.
Right when the local government in Da Nang City announced the new patient of SARS-CoV-2, on July 26 the Ministry of Health organized a training session about Bluezone – electronic mask (a solution to use Bluetooth Low Energy technology to spot suspected cases).
After being installed and activated, Bluezone allows its smart device to contact with others in the Bluezone community within a range of 2 meters. It records the distance and duration of contacts.
Until July 27, over 256,000 people downloaded this app to their devices. This number is expected to rise day after day.
In the event of an F0 discovery, an authorized healthcare unit will enter necessary information into the Bluezone system so that all users in that community can retrieve. Each smart phone then compares its user’s contact history for a possible close contact with this F0. When such a case is detected, Bluezone will immediately send a warning message to the user, along with detailed instruction for contacting the nearest healthcare unit for help.
Bluezone is able to detect people in the F0, F1, and F2 groups.
Bluezone and NCOVI are two out of over 20 applications developed by IT businesses in Vietnam to use in the fierce combat against Covid-19 pandemic. They were introduced on March 9, 2020 and have proved their effectiveness so far in active disease prevention and control.
Due to the complication of this Covid-19 wave in Vietnam, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Information & Communications speed up the use of technology to detect and track suspected cases effectively.
Mobile network carriers are also contributing to the fight against Covid-19 at the moment.
Representatives of Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone, and Vietnamobile stated that since July 27, they have continuously delivered warning messages about the high risk of Covid-19 spread to all their subscribers in Da Nang City, encouraging these people to install Bluezone for timely alerts. This message was then sent to subscribers in other provinces as well.
Obviously, technologies have successfully played their role in the fight against Covid-19 in Vietnam in hope of stopping its spread and harmful effects nationwide.
