The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is a multi-sector approach and it involves treatment, containment, information and production of a vaccine. Currently, governments are working on all four, but the most visible is how governments are working on disseminating information and containment of the virus.
Rwanda is now using technology to raise awareness against the COVID-19 pandemic. They have added the use of drones which will fly around to raise awareness about the disease.
1/2
We have added drones to our methods of raising awareness about #COVID-19.As drones pass your neighborhoods, we ask you:
1. Listen carefully the message.
2. Don’t leave your home to view the drones. pic.twitter.com/kafsuNGdmN
— Rwanda National Police (@Rwandapolice) April 12, 2020
The Rwandese police says that the citizens need to listen to the message being beamed by the drones and they are not supposed to leave their houses to view the drones.
The use of drones is a pretty good strategy to disseminate information on a country that is in lock-down due to a pandemic. From the photos above, you can see that the drones are retrofitted with horn loudspeakers for broadcasting the information to the citizens that are in their houses.
Rwanda is doing this probably due to the fact that the entire country is in lockdown due to the coronavirus. The President, Paul Kagame, extended the lockdown by another 15 days to April 19th when the country’s confirmed cases jumped to 82. Currently, the country has 127 confirmed cases with 42 recoveries and no reported deaths.
Rwanda has been using drones for various things for a while now. Last year, they were reported to use drones to deliver blood and medical supplies. Drones have proven to be important in such cases and now the country is using them as information dissemination tools. Back home, Kenya finally approved drone operations in the country so we will see how that will transpire in the future.
