IAS officer develops Corona resource site
LUCKNOW: A 2012-batch IAS officer Prashant Sharma, and his wife Poulomi, have developed a portal www.coronajankari.in -- a simple website in Hindi for the use of the general public.
“There is a lot of misinformation, rumours doing the rounds. Hence, we developed coronajankari.in (a single resource that gives WHO guidelines and answers what is Corona and why is social distancing important,” Sharma said. “This is a singlepoint resource, giving relevant information and answers, based on the ministry of health, ICMR and WHO guidelines, in easily understandable Hindi. For those who don’t like to read, there are easy-to-understand, self explanatory images and short videos as well,” he said.
“The website also includes a simple step-by-step Hindi tool for self-assessing whether a person has symptoms of coronavirus (Covid-19) or not. It also serves as a simple site to authoritatively educate government staff about Covid-19,” he said.
The portal can collect data such as gender, age, incidents of breathlessness, fever and coughing with location and can help the government identify and treat hotspots of Covid-19, if many selfdiagnoses are positive in a particular area. This would be of importance in a community transmission stage, he said. “While interacting with our staff and others, we realised that for a large mass that is only Hindi-speaking, there is no single resource available on the internet that gives all
THE PORTAL CAN COLLECT DATA SUCH AS GENDER, AGE, INCIDENTS OF BREATHLESSNESS, FEVER AND COUGHING WITH LOCATION AND CAN HELP THE GOVT IDENTIFY AND TREAT HOTSPOTS OF COVID-19
the necessary information, and busts myth in one place,” the IAS officer said.
“This tool has been developed along the lines of the National Health Service in the UK. It will collect data (such as gender, age and location) with self reporting, and can help the government identify and treat Covid-19 hotspots in the community transmission stage.
“For example, if in Harouni village in Lucknow, many people are accessing the tool and are ticking yes to the questions of whether they have a fever, cough and breathlessness, then the data can help the government identify Harouni as an early hotspot for infection,” Sharma said.