Health Ministry’s hotline receives nearly 19,000 incoming calls in one day

Vietnam Ministry of Health’s hotline 1900 9095, which was put into operation as of 7a.m on February 2, has accepted 18,646 incoming calls over the past 24 hours amid fears of the Wuhan pandemic.

Illustrative photo shows the warning of "Quarantine area". Photo by Vietnam News Agency.

The Ministry said 80 experts have joined the hotline consultancy throughout the day with the successful connectivity reaching over 90%.

7p.m is the “rush hour” of calls with 2,700. While around 51% asked for symptoms and prevention of the coronavirus, the proportions of people sought answers for where to take epidemic tests and the price of masks was at 15% and 10% of callers asked for information on school breaks.

The question bank has been updated regularly. Some difficult cases that needed urgent solutions were referred to other relevant agencies.

Almost calls were answered at once while only 0.2% of the reports needed to be solved by local authorities or require in-depth and professional response, which were then forwarded to the provincial Medical Services Administration, the Preventive Medicine Agency and provincial health departments.

The Ministry has asked people to make short and exact inquiries and avoid disturbing questions when they call the hotline.

Currently there are several emergency lines to report on the epidemic including the hotlines 1900 9095 and1900 3228, both free of charge, as well as those of 21 hospitals where people suspected of nCoV carriers are put in quarantine.