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Applying information technology to control the Covid-19 epidemic

People’s Army – Along with active testing and vaccination, the implementation of information technology has been identified by the Government as one of three main aspects to quickly control the Covid-19 epidemic.

However, technology solutions will only shows the highest efficiency if there is the self-discipline of each citizen and the active and strong participation from local authorities.

How effective is technology?

Singapore has shown the power of technology to help controlling the Covid-19 epidemic and maintain the new normal of society. This island nation increases the use of quick testing technologies and applies tracing technology through two applications, TraceTogether for close contact tracing (similar to Bluezone proximity detection software) and SafeEntry application that uses QR code scanning to record presence at a location.

Leading experts work at the National Center for Technology for Covid-19 Prevention and Control

Currently, electronic health declaration forms are the basic input data for health authorities to obtain information about people’s health. Meanwhile, by scanning a QR code in combination with an electronic medical declaration at public places, when a case is identified as F0, the authorities will base on the person’s QR code scanning history to track down the epidemiological landmarks. At the same time, also through the QR code that F0 has scanned, the authorities can quickly determine how many objects have gone to the locations and conduct tracing and making a list of F1.

Many technologies are currently being continuously updated and deployed to match the evolution of the epidemic. For example, when the number of people being vaccinated against Covid-19 is increasing, “digitizing” vaccination is a necessary job to allow people traveling from one area to another as well as engaging countries reopened. Viettel-VTS Enterprise Solutions Corporation (Military Industry-Telecommunications Group) received the task of making electronic health books and vaccination management system, issuing certificates of vaccination of Covid-19 electronically. Talking about this solution, Deputy Director of the Center for Medical Solutions (VTS) Luu The Anh said that after injecting, citizens are issued with an injection certificate and a confirmation QR code, and the data is managed on the system. After the first injection, the QR code appears as a yellow ring and after the second injection changes to a blue ring. This QR code will act as a vaccine passport for citizens. To prevent stealing the codes from people who have been vaccinated, Viettel applies Blockchain technology, the QR code will automatically change after 3 minutes to ensure information is safety.

Centralized management of data from applications

Although the effectiveness of the implementation of technology in the prevention and control the Covid-19 epidemic is clear, it is not easy to apply technology to some thousands of people of different classes and levels.

To make more than 1.5 million medical declarations and more than 12,000 QR code, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Nam said: “Bac Ninh has actively propagated technology applications in various forms. Moreover, to make people trust, the locality needs to have a reasonable organization and use of data.” If localities actively conduct digital transformation and centralize databases, the process of building Covid-19 prevention system and control software will take place quickly.

To meet the urgent requirements of the Covid-19 epidemic prevention and control, according to Minister of Information and Communications – Nguyen Manh Hung, the implementation of technology needs several prerequisites to ensure success. Firstly, the key technologies must be used, and the user rate must be high enough. Secondly, data and data processing must be centralized and interconnected between applications so that the faster and more accurate data can be traced, the sooner threats will be detected. Thirdly, the software must be written in the form of a platform that is easy to manipulate so that all levels from provinces, districts, communes, and residential groups can use.

Recently, the Ministry of Information and Communications established the National Technology Center for Covid-19 Prevention and Control, operating 24/7 to ensure the ability to react quickly to the complicated growth of the epidemic. Mr. Do Lap Hien said that the center is the unit that controls the overall design of technology applications that previously lacked connection and data sharing.

According to Mr. Do Lap Hien, the overall model of technology systems for the prevention and control of Covid-19 currently consists of 6 main components:

  • Medical declaration system and QR code scanning at quarantine points, public facilities, etc. add.
  • System of Management of suspected cases, management of traced cases.
  • Isolation Management System.
  • Covid-19 safe anti-epidemic map system.
  • Test Management System.
  • Immunization management system and electronic certificate of vaccination of Covid-19 vaccine. The center came into operation with unified and continuous management of systems, centralized connection of data, effective support for tracing, serving tens of millions of users.

People make medical declarations by scanning QR codes at Bach Mai Hospital

The epidemic period also created an environment for technology businesses to show their capabilities, for technology to help solve daily issues. However, to make technology effective, each citizen needs to appear their responsibility to the society in epidemic prevention and control by installing and using technology applications and software.

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