The world has been brought to a near standstill with the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus.
Kenya joined the list of countries in Africa affected by the pandemic two weeks ago, after it confirmed its first case of the Covid-19 disease.
A week later, the cases rapidly increased to 7 forcing the government to take up drastic measures.
One of the ways designed by the administration was the setting up of a hotline call centre.
Together with the help of Safaricom, the institution was set up at their Mlolongo office.
The new project is being run by a group of 60 Kenyans tasked to educate and answer questions from concerned citizens.
Safaricom’s Chief Of Staff Sylvia Mulinge explained that the workers had received training courtesy of the Ministry of Health.
Mulinge further noted that the number of people deployed for such a situation depended on the number of calls received at the centre.
“What we did is that we have worked with the Ministry of Health in terms of training.
“So we have over 300 staff who have been trained but what we do is that the number of staff deployed at any one time, depends on the number of calls that are coming in,” remarked Mulinge.
It was revealed that calls from the male gender were the highest in comparison to the female gender during the crisis facing the country.
The reason why the high number of calls are from men is yet to be explained.
The total number of calls received so far is 10,496.
In addition, the humble-looking Chief of Staff commented that the facility on Friday received approximately 200,000 calls.
People from the Western region of the nation were also identified as the majority to be making calls to the temporary set up.
Questions most asked at the centre revolved around the symptoms, how one can protect themselves and how the virus is transmitted.
Dr Wangari Ng’ang’a, who is an advisor, committee on Coronavirus and part of the call centre team, mentioned that medical personnel are always on standby if the callers exhibit the correct symptoms.
“If the symptoms align and meet the case definition given by WHO, then we are able to escalate it to the emergency operations centre,” stated Wangari.
Mulinge proclaimed that some of the callers are referred to the county level in the event the people at the facility are not able to give answers.
“We have our contacts from the counties across the country where we give them the number and the refer them,” Mulinge expressed.
Despite all the efforts put in place, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe later on Friday, revealed that the coming two weeks were crucial for the country.
According to Kagwe, based on the events taking place in the most hit countries, the number of cases increase rapidly after two weeks of confirming those with the virus.