NEISD student helps design SA coronavirus self-screening website

Sixteen-year-old Rishabh Jain has been keeping busy since the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of his high school just after spring break.

Like most of us, the Ronald Reagan High school junior and his parents, Sonal and Nitesh Jain, were keeping up with all of the latest developments of Covid-19.

“We were watching the news about two weekends ago and we saw the mayor talking about the coronavirus and it just popped into our heads to do something about this,” Rishabh said.

So, he contacted the City of San Antonio and Health Department officials volunteering to help design a self-screening tool for the city’s homepage.

“He came up with the idea and said, ‘dad there are so many people who potentially need to have the coronavirus test and a lot of people can be nervous, so why can’t we use technology to help people pre-screen?’ and that’s what we did,” Nitesh said.

City officials said yes, so with the help of Rishabh’s parents and their software company, the website launched on www.sanantonio.gov and has been used by thousands of people across the city.

“The sanantonio.gov website has a button that has a self-screen test and you can click on that and that’s the website that we made. That webpage has nine questions and it’s different symptoms or different things you can have and based on which ones you click it advises you to go see if you need to be tested for the coronavirus. Or, it might say that you are not able to get tested because you don’t have the required symptoms or different things that it requires to get tested,” Rishabh said.

“We are really, really proud of Rishabh. He said, ‘dad can we do it, can we give back to the community and do this?’”

Rishabh has received positive feedback from city officials and is happy to help his community.

He also said he’s thankful to his parents and his Reagan family for their support during these uncertain times.

“If you are a teacher or a student, you should stay strong and try to get through this time because it’s going to get better and do what you can do make a change in the environment or the community,” he said.

It’s a change that’s making a big difference, because #neisdcares!

You can find the coronavirus symptom self-screening website by clicking here: https://covid19test.quacito.com