In episode nineteen of Inside Covid-19, the first easing of the lockdown in South Africa; in-depth interviews with the leader of Business4SA’s Covid-19 public healthcare stream and with the founder of the suddenly popular video conferencing company Zoom; a good start for the free online consulting service; and lessons from Germany which has started to ease restrictions on its citizens. – Alec Hogg
First in the Covid-19 headlines today:
- SA’s National Command Council on Covid-19 has announced a gradual lifting of the lockdown. It includes allowing mines to start operating at 50% of capacity. Other sectors of the economy to open will be essential technology services and some call-centres. The Minerals Council welcomed the news saying its members are equipped to screen, test and manage employees that are Covid-19 positive. At a media briefing today Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma announced that the restriction on informal traders will also be lifted, but the ban on alcohol and tobacco sales remain in place.
- The economic cost of Covid-19 continues to rise with 5.2 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits this week, taking the total in the past month to 20 million. The country’s $350bn small business loan programme will require further cash injections after it was exhausted today. In the country’s epicentre of New York, Governor Cuomo announced that residents now have to wear masks or coverings in public places, and extended the lockdown to May 15. In Japan, Prime Minister Abe declared a nationwide state of emergency and plans to pass legislation to give Yen100,000 to each person – a payment equivalent to R17,500. Worldwide, confirmed cases are now at 2.1m and deaths at 140,000.
- In South Africa, Discovery Health Medical Scheme has set aside R2.3bn from its reserves to support an immediate contribution holiday for businesses with between 10 and 200 employees to defer up to two months of medical scheme contributions. The company says these contributions will be repaid over a period of up to 12 months after the deferment, with no interest charged in the deferred contributions. Discovery is one of 21 major companies whose executives have thus far followed the example of president Cyril Ramaphosa and donated one third of their salary for the next three months to help fight the virus. The list includes SA’s Big Six banks, its two major mobile phone companies, Remgro, Mr Price, Woolworths and Sibanye.
- SA finance minister Tito Mboweni reckons Sub Saharan Africa will require $100bn to respond sufficiently to the Covid-19 pandemic – plus another $40bn of additional resources for what he says are “based on the kinetics of the pandemic.” Mboweni was addressing a virtual meeting of the International Monetary Fund’s traditional spring gathering.
- On a lighter note, here’s a lovely story from our London correspondent Linda van Tilburg…Ninety nine year old Captain Tom Moore originally wanted to raise £1,000 for NHS Charities Together by completing 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. But he smashed his target after more than 650,000 people made donations to his fundraising page. As he finished the challenge, he said: “I feel fine, I hope you’re all feeling fine too.” By midday, Capt Tom’s JustGiving page, which temporarily crashed shortly after he finished the challenge, was showing donations of £13m.
We’re joined by Ana Endres who has been intimately involved with the special offering that Discovery has for South Africans in partnership with Vodacom where you can get a free consultation with a doctor if you believe there is some issue to do with Covid-19. Mrs. Endres have I got that right?Â
That’s correct. So anyone who suspects that they might be infected with Covid-19 can go through a process of checking their symptoms, and based on the results of their triage, in the case of being at risk for Covid 19 they will have the ability to conduct a virtual consults with one of the doctors that are part of that covert team.Â
Just go back a step, the triage tool?Â
The triage is based on the WHO latest guidelines and it tries to understand whether a person exhibits symptoms that place them at risk of indeed having a covert infection. We’ve already had to update those guidelines, but for instance they will ask whether you find that you’ve got a fever, runny nose or cough and they will ask you whether you’ve been in contact with someone that has been identified as a positive case of Covid-19 ect. Based on the results of the answers to those questions you will then be given a certain rating of risk with regard to a possible Covid-19 infection. If you are indeed at a good risk then it will automatically open up the ability for you to do a consultation with the doctor.
Where are those questions?Â
They’re all on the websites. It’s part of the journey that us as a patient would follow. The member journey starts off with understanding more about Covid-19 and there’s comprehensive information around the disease itself, then follows up and asks you if you want to register or logging if you’re a discovery member if you want to know more about and go through the triage. It opens up the triage tool, if it identifies you as at risk, it opens up the virtual consult ability.
Great. What happens next?
So if you decide that you want to do the virtual consult you are able to schedule with one of the doctors. The team of doctors available are pre populated with their closest times of availability for consultation. You just pick and choose a time and day that is convenient for you. At that point you might want to insert a few details around your symptoms, any allergies or chronic conditions. At the time of the consultation you will be prompted and the doctor will have access to the data you have inputted into the system.
Where is the consult conducted?Â
Over the discovery platform called DrConnect. The platform allows you to do video or audio consults. It also allows you to do chat consults, so they would not be live but would be synchronous. These are all available options in the DrConnect platform that Discovery has.
How much has it been used?
We’ve already seen a significant increase since we’ve launched it. We’ve had more than 4,000 consultations since launching this effort. A good part of these are for Covid related matters but discovery members are also having virtual consults with their doctors for anything else that they have, so a portion of these 4,000 consults have just been discovery members with normal chronic consults with their doctors as well. It is a significant increase, I’d say more than a 1,500% increase over the previous month.
All to do with over 19 largely too?
Yes, all to do with Covid-19. Whether people are wanting to understand their symptoms for Covid-19 or they are saying I can’t get out of the house I prefer not to go to a hospital or to the clinical setting and rather do the virtual consult. For those two reasons it has significantly bumped up the number of virtual consoles.
Is this aligned with the Vodacom offering?
Yes, the Vodacom offering is specifically for Covid-19 consults. In that offering, Vodacom and Discovery have jointly put significant funding towards Covid-19 specific consults and that offering is opened up to everyone, not just for Discovery members but for the entire South African population.
Mrs. Endres if I can just get this correct. If somebody were to inquire through the Vodacom service that has been quite well articulated would they come through this platform as well or would they be a different process?
It’s the same platform. Say that you are a Vodacom subscriber, you go to their Web site and there is a lot of information around Covid-19. Once you decide that you want to continue with a virtual consultation you are automatically routed to the common platform that both Vodacom and Discovery are jointly using for this partnership.
4000 sounds like a lot of people. Are you guys happy with the take up?
We are definitely happy that we can help and contribute to the risk tracing and the treatment of this disease in South Africa. We estimate that a lot more virtual consults will be requested and initiated in the next few weeks and months.We expect that the disease’s trajectory will still increase and more and more people will find themselves passing the triage tool having symptoms. This is just the beginning of the usage of the consults and fund.Â
Just so that we understand it correctly. The two ways into the consultations, one is via the Discovery website where you have the triage tool which is very easy to find. The second is via the Vodacom service. How do you physically get through the Vodacom service, is there a number to call?
It’s all online, there isn’t a phone number to call. If you go through the Vodacom website you will see a big banner there that is Covid-19 related and you press on the banner and it will just follow through as an online journey. Similarly on the Discovery website you will find a big Covid-19 banner. It’s also available on the Discovery app.
From your perspective, I’m sure given that you are head of Discovery’s health services you would be learning a lot from the experience. Could you see these learnings being applied elsewhere?
Absolutely. We are learning what the doctors, patients and members find easy or less easy on the platform. We are also starting to understand how we need to change and improve and evolve this platform going forward. Discovery has had this platform for about 3 years and we are now stress testing the platform usability because there’s a lot more people engaged in it.
So you’re able to adjust and maybe smooth out the wrinkles.
Absolutely and it’s a continuous process. Even just from a triage tool perspective we’ve already made two adjustments because the guidelines evolve we immediately change the tool to reflect that.Â
Head of Discovery Health Care Services, Mrs. Endres.