Kozhikode’s COVID Jagratha portal wins e-governance awards

The portal had earlier drawn national attention with other State governments emulating the model.

COVID-19 Jagratha portal, a website developed by the Kozhikode district administration for pandemic management, has won the e-governance awards instituted by the State government.

A release said on Sunday that the project won the first prize in e-health and e-medicine categories. The Kozhikode district administration also won the first prize in the category of innovative projects in COVID management. The awards were for 2019-20 and 2020-21 period. They were given away at a recent event held in Thiruvananthapuram by Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty. V. Ummer Farooq, District Medical Officer, received the honours.

The website was launched in the initial weeks of the pandemic to track and help people returning from abroad or other States to Kozhikode. It was reportedly the first of its kind in the country. Later, the State government launched similar websites for all other districts. The portal was conceived mainly for the surveillance of people in home quarantine, treatment of patients, and as an online system to register and solve complaints. It was later developed and new features were added based on new requirements.

The portal had earlier drawn national attention with other State governments emulating the model.

The idea was proposed by District Collector S. Sambasiva Rao and it was launched in association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Kerala State IT Mission. States such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and Puducherry had developed similar modules for the management and supply of oxygen for hospitals. The Uttarakhand government too had launched a similar system with the help of the NIC.

The portal had details about the production of oxygen in Kerala, updated regularly by manufacturers, its collection, usage, and the availability for the next 24 hours. Hospitals and other health facilities used to directly seek oxygen supply through the website using separate login IDs and passwords. It was followed up by the State and district-level oxygen war rooms set up by the government. If the request was for emergency use, they can go for the ‘critical request’ option.