Oklahoma State Department of Health launches new self-serve Covid-19 portal

The Oklahoma state health department is launching a new way for Oklahomans to keep themselves safe.

“The pandemic’s not over”, said state epidemiologist, Jolianne Stone.

“We are still as an agency monitoring it very closely, but this was the right time to really say let’s make those next steps and transition and really allow the individuals to really make some of those choices for themselves with the information that’s available.”

Now Oklahomans can take control of their health information, with the start of their self-serve, Covid-19 portal.

“What it does is when you test positive for covid through your hospital or through a lab, per our current reporting process the lab results, go to the Oklahoma state department of health for a follow-up.  Well, when this new system launches what’ll happen is when that lab system gets reported, individuals will receive a text message stating that they have a lab result that;’s positive and it allows the individual to on their own time enter information about themselves,” Stone said. 

The new system will allow oklahomans to easily send their covid status to anyone they may have infected if positive in their contacts and will allow them to print out a letter with information on when and how long they should isolate for.

“It’s the opportunity for individuals to be notified and receive information about the next steps that would be important for them to take.”

Then, those contacts who may be infected can even report their symptoms, if any.

“In turn, they can actually go in and say hey I wanna report if I develop symptoms or how long do I need to quarantine”

The department says their biggest hope from this is to get Oklahomans a better understanding of the steps to take if they are infected, to help slow down the current spread.

“We needed to have some way to ensure that all individuals receive their test results, so we needed to have, or positive test results, so we also needed to have a way that all individuals were able to get the most up-to-date and accurate information in order to make those best choices.”

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