The COVID-19 virus is spreading across the world like a wildfire and Ethiopia has reported the first case on March 13, 2020.

We know from publicly available data that if urgent containment strategies implemented are not implemented, the virus will quickly get out of hand like in China, Italy, Spain, and now the US.

Current projections, if left to its own devices, Ethiopia is roughly 19 - 23 days from reporting the 100th case and roughly 42 days behind Italy, which is considered the worst-case scenario.

We need an army of tech volunteers to help the Ethiopian Ministry of Health collect, analyze, and report to the agency so that we can assist them in the time of need. The better data collection/analysis/reporting there is, the better the response and the more effective the mitigation strategies will be. To do all this, software is needed, and that is where you come in! Whatever skills you have: whether that's programming, product/project management, design, etc. there is a way for you to contribute.

This community believes that speed trumps perfection

The Government of Ethiopia Ministry of Health team had two very specific asks to be delivered in 48 hours.

1. Here is the data on the channels: - SMS - Automated calls - USSD Channel push - Telegram & Facebook (usage is higher than WhatsApp)

2. Monitor and respond to fake news - Some mechanism to see the current conversation stream and respond to it in a targeted ways

1. Ways to tell if they have symptoms
2. Patient self reporting (ability for them to report their status because they can not be kept in the hospital)
3. Breakdown of patient types

1. Sign up to volunteer to volunteer.

2. Join the public Slack channel

3. Attend the daily conference call (TBD)

4. Jump on and help on one of the projects

1. Build a multi-channel, multi-lingual chat bot
2. covid19.et - A dashboard to collect and desciminate COVID19 information.
3. Tracking System - Tracking System
4. Important Links - Where all trusted news, info and updates are found with the help of the community crowdsourcing capability.

We are in the early stages of this effort and we welcome your ideas. Share it on the Slack channel or create a GitHub issue. Meeting notes and other discussions will be in the Wiki.