Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sharon Belmar-George, today announced that the 311 line is now up and running. The line is geared at providing the public with direct access to general information on and about COVID-19.
The line will be manned from 7am-7pm daily and plans are afoot to make it a 24 hour hotline service. “We are working with another agency to extend this to make it 24 hours so it will be a full hotline”, revealed Dr. Belmar-George.
With support of mobile telecom giants Digicel, the Ministry of Health received some 40 mobile phones which is expected to be distributed between clinical partners.
Dr. Belmar-George further explained that the mobile phones will be equipped with video, thus, enabling patients to connect via video calling to better explain their signs and symptoms.
According to Dr. Belmar-George, although the island has had zero cases of in country transmission, the video calling coincides with the call for social distancing and would limit considerably the number of persons who would have to take the bus to visit a health care facility.