Victor Muthembwa’s Contact Tracing App: A Means to Curb the COVID-19 Pandemic

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, most countries have been forced to shut down their economy. This has increased the risk of a potential economic recession. Despite the lockdown, the number of new cases has kept increasing exponentially. This could be attributed to the fact that the health system, particularly in African countries, does not have enough medical personnel and resources to effectively handle this pandemic.

Amidst this pandemic crisis, Victor Muthembwa, a programmer with a medical background, and his two partners have come up with an innovation intended to assist their country's health system in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The trio who are students at JKUAT, Kenya, has designed a Contact Tracing App to be used to know who, where and when someone comes in contact with a COVID-19 positive individual. 

With the recent upgrade, the following functions can be performed by the app:

• Contact tracing
• Triaging
• Case management

The combination of these functions is intended to relieve the burden of paperwork and tackle the cumbersome nature associated with manual records in most of the hospitals across the country. 

Contact tracing is one of the tools that has been used in curbing infectious diseases over the years. It is believed that this Contact Tracing App would help in gradually destigmatizing the COVID-19 disease.