COVID-19 Wireless Self-Assessment Software for Rural Areas in Nigeria

Abstract

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus that emerged in late 2019 and has caused a pandemic of acute respiratory illness called ‘Coronavirus Disease 2019’ (COVID19) that threatens human health and public safety. To mitigate the impact of Covid-19, much has been done to ensure that people are able to self-diagnose and determine whether or not they are affected by the virus. While there is a self-assessment tool, it is not on the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) homepage, but on their coronavirus microsite. And this self-assessment tool is so visually unimpressive and small that it stands out among the flood of information on the website. Coupled with the fact that many Nigerians are not smart enough to find their way to the website to take the test, it is highly unlikely that it has been used extensively by the public. Therefore, it is critical to develop a self-assessment tool that not only allows users to assess whether they are at risk and informs them of the steps they need to take to protect their own safety and the safety of others, but that is also easily accessible and understandable to the general public. Therefore, this article presented a standalone wireless application for COVID19 self-assessment that complies with the NCDC guidelines. The software was developed in response to current COVID19 problems around the world, particularly to support self-assessment in rural areas of Nigeria due to a lack of network connection for local people to access the NCDC’s current web-based COVID19 self-assessment.