"Hey Siri, Do I Have Coronavirus?" | How Tech Companies are combating COVID-19.

The Coronavirus has shaken up the world. That is the greatest understatement of the year. It has completely turned it on its head.

Shops, amusement parks, concert venues, churches...everywhere is closed. We've all been urged to stay inside and people are in a panic.

The hospitals are over-crowded. Everybody with a cough, headache, or as little as a sneeze believes they've contracted the illness. People are frolicking to already-crowded hospitals at the slightest thing. To combat that, the government and health officials have urged people everywhere not to come out unless they're experiencing life-threatening symptoms.

The most common symptoms of the virus are:

Fever

Tiredness

Dry Cough

And in severe cases: Difficulty Breathing.

To combat the number of people flocking into hospitals, tech companies are providing means for people to self-test themselves at homes so they do not have to leave the house.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided a chatbot called Clara which was created in partnership with CDC Foundation and Microsoft Azure’s Healthcare Bot service. It is a Coronavirus self-checker.

On Google, if you search the term: "how do i know if i have coronavirus", you will be shown a page like below which contains necessary information you'll need to know about the virus as well as how many confirmed cases, recoveries, and deaths there have been from the virus in your own country and around the world.

Now, Apple has joined in to help. Users begun noticing around March 22nd that when they asked Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, if they had Coronavirus, the intuitive assistant would walk them through a series of questions drawn from the U.S. Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine if in fact they were exhibiting symptoms of the disease and if they had to go into a hospital.

If a person's symptoms appeared to life-threatening, the virtual assistant would then go ahead to direct the user into calling 911 or whatever emergency alternative is available in the user's country.

Here is one Twitter user's demonstration of the feature in use.

Initially, reports were that the service works only in the United States but I just tried it on my Glo network here in Nigeria and it worked for me.

This is a truly helpful new innovation that can help not only Nigeria and the United States, but the world at large.

Please use the technology to self-test yourself first before going into any hospitals. In case you do not know, the risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus is higher in those hospitals, than it is in your bedroom. This is because people who have the virus and those who do not, regardless of if they're exhibiting symptoms, go to these hospitals. In these hospitals, they touch the door handles, some might cough, some might touch objects, chairs, money, etc. So you who may not even have the virus could then come in contact with these COVID sources and leave the hospital with a virus you did not come there with.

So please, instead of rushing to your local hospital because of any minor symptom you're experiencing, use the technology provided. Read the information available to you, and stay home. It is really important.

We're all going to get through this tough times. Until then, please stay safe!

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Until next time, have a wonderful rest of your day!