Mobile service provider Vodacom has donated 20,000 cellphones to assist in the fight against COVID-19 in South Africa.

President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement at the Department of Health (DoH)’s COVID-19 Information Centre at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria.

The data center has been set up to monitor and track the spread of the Coronavirus 19 in the country.

Ramaphosa thanked Vodacom and the CSIR leadership which is always trying to be ahead of the curve.

“The phones are going to be used by health workers throughout the country, 20,000 of them will have this phone with an app that will enable us to get the data right to the CSIR in real time. As they input the data, as they screen our people and then through this, they will be able to direct people for testing to hospital and places like that.”

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub says the phones is just one way in which the mobile operator is trying to assist government in the fight against COVID-19.

“The Virtual Doctor platform that launched last week in partnership with discovery will hopefully also take pressure off the health system where there is a simple scanning through USSD and an App and then also where you can access a virtual doctor if you seen as high risk.”

Joosub says the phones will be loaded with five hundred minutes of airtime and 5GB of data to assist the health worker send through the information after scanning the patient.

Faizel Patel – 09/04/2020

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)