With the detection of the first cases of COVID 19 coronavirus in Uruguay, and as a consequence of the fear and uncertainty, a flood of changes was introduced in all fields. The general population, the organizations, and the Government had to act quickly in the face of the emergency situation. The healthcare area was one of the fields with the most impact, which led to the creation of the National Coronavirus Plan (PNC, for its acronym in Spanish), powered by the Ministry of Public Health.
Solution
Right from the start of the pandemic, and as part of their Digital Strategy to face COVID-19, the Uruguayan government made the CoronavirusUy application available to its citizens, a platform of interest for both citizens and healthcare providers, which centralizes all official information related to COVID-19 and to any positive COVID-19 cases. CoronavirusUy integrates public and private healthcare providers with the Ministry of Public Health (MSP for its acronym in Spanish) as an official organism, allowing for the exchange of information between the systems owned by every healthcare provider, connecting citizens with suspected COVID-19 coronavirus symptoms to healthcare providers with the aim of reducing consultation and healthcare wait times in the face of the healthcare emergency, and to monitor and track both suspected and confirmed COVID cases.
Scope
In order to exchange information, information inboxes were developed for each institution, whether they were digitized or not, in order to access the information and to successfully monitor patients’ clinical situations.
The CoronavirusUy application was created very quickly as a consequence of the need to have specific relative information available. As the pandemic advanced, the app started evolving and integrating new features that were required given the situation that was being faced at the moment.
The features it currently has are:
- Activation of exposure alerts by turning on the bluetooth, which allows for each user to receive notifications in case they have been in direct contact with COVID-positive individuals.
- General information updated daily related to the amount of new cases, recovered people, deceased people, people in ICU, and the number of tests performed. There are also other indicators such as the behavior of the pandemic in every region in the country.
- Vaccination status updated daily, presenting data regarding the number of administered doses, progress by vaccination region, type of dose administered, age range, etc.
- Vaccination schedule,, allowing users to sign up to receive the COVID vaccine.
- Sworn statement of entry to the country, allowing users to fill out the sworn statement to enter the country from within the application itself.
- Important notificationssuch as exposure alerts, test results, data validation, adn access to vaccination certificates.
- My status, which allows for a person to be associated with the application, and therefore, for them to view their information and their history in relation to the disease, including tests, antigen results or PCR results, vaccination dates, and dates for the next dose, vaccination certificates, etc. It is also possible to report side effects related to the vaccination.
- COVID passport , which includes everything related to the disease that is requested when traveling.
Results
- More than 1.5 million cases processed through the clinical CoronavirusUy inbox.
- More than 2 million interactions with the National Coronavirus Plan database.
- More than 600 thousand people have downloaded the application.