What if we could minimize the COVID-19 impact while increasing social standards in Brazil?

Note: This text was initially published on LinkedIn during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, Brazil became the 2nd country with the most Coronavirus deaths worldwide. While you are reading this paragraph, +100,000 families mourn for their loved ones.

Although the social, psychological, and economic consequences of this crisis are incomparable, many Brazilians - principally those living in favelas and peripheries - have been suffering for years from the lack of social assistance and support from the government and this time has not been different.

What if we could identify ways to use technology to minimize the Coronavirus impact while providing the grounds to increase social standards in Brazil?

I have started this exercise to map out potential ways to overcome the challenges imposed by the virus while reducing social differences and increasing public sector efficiency. Although the analysis is - as expected - superficial, I decided sharing my line of thought. We can start our problem-solving as follows:

Based on the assumption that staying at home is the best proposition to decrease the spread of the virus, to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system, and to preserve lives, there are three reasons why people generally leave their houses:

1. Work/study: Engaging in an activity to earn income or any educational degree or skill.
2. Family obligations: Buying groceries or medicines, taking your child to the school, or refueling your car are some examples here.
3. Leisure: Literally, having fun and enjoying life - such as going to cinemas, going to the gym, meeting friends for a coffee, etc.

By focusing on (2) Family obligations, we can outline the most common family obligations an individual or a family may have in the list below, segmenting by essential and nonessential ones:

Essential - i.e. a family member’s life or yours depend on these activities:

1. Getting groceries;
2. Going to see a doctor;
3. Buying medicines;

Non-essential:

1. Taking your child to the school;
2. Refueling your car;
3. Withdrawing money;
4. Paying your bills;
5. Buying home supplies; etc.

There are not as many essential obligations per se - you may suffer from boredom, but the activities above will keep you alive. Our next line of thought is: how do we ensure that every individual or family has access to essentials?

Brainstorming a few potential solutions, we can suggest the below:

Getting groceries:

• Concept: Government provides food parcels to families - principally to those living in favelas and in worst conditions.

• How: Individuals and families may use a platform (app or website) to apply and public authorities, leveraging companies’ supply chain and logistics, deliver on a (bi)weekly basis.

Going to see a doctor:

• Concept: Government manages and employs available doctors and hospitals via the National Health System.

• How: A pre-analysis could be done via a platform - i.e. video chat or audio chat - and the most urgent cases are handled on a priority basis. In case of emergency, an ambulance may be dispatched, but for urgent and non-urgent cases, the platform provides an automated booking system based on priority, location, and availability.

Buying medicines:

• Concept: Government provides access to drugs and medicines “on-demand”.

• How: People may use a platform (app or website) to request drugs according to their needs. Items can be delivered by riders on scooters, motorbikes, bicycles, or even drones.

We need, however, to tackle some underlying challenges and one of them is “how to guarantee universal access to the internet and a smartphone?”. We mention below some initial thoughts, skipping a deeper analysis at this moment:

How to guarantee universal access to the internet?

Since our “target audience” is less well-off people living in large cities’ outskirts, we may “ignore” potential solutions for remote and rural areas such as the Google Loon - internet connectivity offered via balloons - but focus on highly dense regions.

• Concept: Government offers free internet for families living in poorer conditions in partnership with Telecommunications companies.

• How: A short research on Google shows many cases of cities using Wi-fi on a municipal scale. As an alternative, we could consider 4G/5G for accessing specific or limited sets of services.

How to guarantee access to smartphones and to proper training?

We may need to break this problem down into:

1. people with at least one smartphone;
2. people with no smartphone but access to one (friends or family);
3. people with no smartphone and no access to one.

For the sake of simplicity, we assume that cases (1) and (2) will be properly addressed and focus on (3) at the moment: how to offer an alternative for people with no access to smartphones?

• Concept: Government offers a specific phone line for helping people fulfil their needs.

• How: Adapting call centers and customer support software as well as training people for handling such cases. In case our above-mentioned platforms are not ready for accessibility, this channel could be used for supporting people with disabilities.

Once the basic needs have been fulfilled, we may focus on the first non-essential obligation you may think of: paying your bills. Considering the economic impact of the crisis, where millions lost their jobs and their sources of income, we should consider alternatives to reduce the burdens of paying bills – here, financial assistance is key for supporting individuals and small business owners.

By segregating bills between critical - i.e. rent, electricity, gas, pension, and taxes - and non-critical bills - such as TV, streaming, gym, etc., the next logical step would be focusing on rent payments.

We first need to identify tenants, landlords, and buy-to-live owners through one of the following ways: from the supply - i.e. landlords - or from the demand - i.e. tenant. Mapping a city’s real estate has its own challenges - such as non-legal rental, irregular properties, etc., but by focusing on the property tax paid by landlords, we could address most of the cases.

Fortunately, there are only three potential states for real estate – an owner can only:

1. use it for her or his purposes (living or business);
2. rent it for an individual or company;
3. have it empty – since no person or no business uses it at the moment.

Considering only solutions for (2), we can think of some ideas – such as emergency support for tenants, partial or complete carry-over of losses for landowners as tax benefits, or even freezing rents. I refrain from estimating the public expenditure and shift into the next key challenge: now that we are able to pay (some) bills, how to enable digital payments on a national scale?

This question itself can become a next article, therefore, I will just recognize that Brazilian Instant Payments system (PIX) and the CAIXA Tem app are potential ways towards overcoming this challenge. In this ideal scenario, individuals and families now have access to their basic needs as well as to smartphone, internet, digital bank accounts, and, luckily enough, are able to pay their bills while surviving this pandemic.

I realize there are many intrinsic issues that we are not addressing here - regulatory, funding, privacy and data protection, etc. We would need to dig deeper and answer questions such as “how to implement such projects on a national scale in a short period of time?”, “how to minimize risks of data breaches or misuse?”, “how to avoid fraud and abuse?”, “how to incentivize companies in such public-private partnership projects?”, and many other layers of questions.

However, the ideas above are just the first steps to use technology for fighting COVID-19 while creating solutions to improve people’s lives in the long-term in Brazil. Instead, many still deny science, ignore the suffering of families, and motivate people to disregard social distancing. The only question we ask ourselves now is: How long will all of this last?