Tech to tackle COVID-19

It is the biggest event this generation has ever faced. It has penetrated every continent (except Antarctica). It doesn't distinguish between caste, religion, status, gender etc. This is the actual antagonist (villian) in the movie that is 'Earth'. This post was not intended to be written, but seeing the situation we are going through and the feedback that I got for this blog, I felt that I have the responsibility to convey my thoughts on how we can tackle this pandemic technologically, and of course, how to prevent such events from occurring in the future. Lets begin!

How did it spread so rapidly?

As we all know, it started from Wuhan, China. Now there are many theories as to the exact mode of origin. Some say that it emerged from a huge load of dead bats stored in a lab, and the virus got transmitted to a lab assistant. Some say that the entire thing was planned by China to take over the world, and so on...

I'm sure that you might have heard about many other stories like these on social media. Now I am not agreeing or denying any of the above stories, but I would like to go by trusted sources.

According to the above video by the news channel Vox, this virus emerged from a popular market in Wuhan. The above video will help in understanding how it originated and spread from animals to humans and so on.

Now the reason the speed of transfer of this virus is so high is maybe because of its insane virality and also due to public negligence. Like seriously, before COVID-19, did anyone think twice before touching any surface? Or did anyone take public hygiene so seriously that hand sanitisers were more sought after than any other commodity?

I am not blaming the general public for this negligence. We have enough stuff, stress, tension going on in our life. Public health and hygiene should have been considered by the governing authorities to be of paramount importance and stringent measures should have been taken at the earliest.

It also speaks loads about the healthcare systems and public awareness in 'developed' countries like Italy, Spain and USA. Despite having low density of population, these countries are suffering a lot as compared to various other densely populated countries.

How can it be tackled?

Here are some technological solutions to tackle such pandemics. These are currently used by various organisations around the world for analysis.

• CoWin-20 / Corona Kavach - The Indian Union Government is currently testing an app which will aim to ensure that citizens do not travel to COVID-19-affected places along with tracking their surrounding with regards to the pandemic. The app will help the users to track all the recent contacts they have made who are later diagnosed with the disease.

• Health Check - This system interacts with every passenger that enters a country using an IVR system (Interactive Voice Response). Its aim is to 'Verify health status of traveling staff and beneficiaries'. It is basically an AI-based chatbot which asks the passenger general health-related questions and if it finds anything suspicious, it redirects the call to a certified doctor. This system was first designed to tackle the Ebola virus spread in Africa, but this system can be applied to any such rapidly spreading virus.

• Safiri Smart - It is a disease and epidemic surveillance and awareness system that uses USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) to alert users about any diseases and epidemics in the region. The users will also get precautionary advice from official government sources. Since this system uses USSD, it does not need tradional network access like our mobile phones. So this system will work in desolate areas where network range is very limited.

• Clara - The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has launched a bot called 'Clara' which can help people take important measures if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, Clara asks a set of questions and gives recommendations if they need medical care. It is built on Microsoft’s 'Healthcare Bot' and powered by the Azure Cloud Architecture.

• Triage CheckUp - It is an automated risk assessment application for health workers that can check a patient’s symptoms and epidemiological factors using Korean coronavirus guidelines for front line triage. A companion application, Diagnosis CheckUp is a self-reporting tool for the general public to assess their risk factors for coronavirus infection.

• NoviGuide - It is a decision support platform that transforms static guidelines into point-of-care decision trees for health systems to rapidly deploy guidance and monitor use. It is basically a platform that can be used by hospitals and various medical institutions to test their products as to how they would be accepted virtually.

• OpenELIS Global - It is an open source enterprise-level laboratory information system. It provides a common codebase for low resource healthcare laboratories around the world.

• WelTel - It is a secure, web-based, communication platform that uses SMS for maximum reach and voice or video outreach when appropriate for integrated virtual care & patient engagement. It takes the patient-doctor interaction online. The patient can interact with doctors around the world, irrespective of where the patient is located, in order to receive state-of-the-art treatment.

• COVID-Net - A neural network has also been developed which spots the disease from chest X-rays.It takes all the data of COVID-19 positive and negative patients and analyses them to find similar patterns which could be helpful to detecting the disease early on. 

• Researchers in Isreal have developed a questionnaire with AI that will help them detect which parts of the country the virus is going to spread. The survey collects user's demographic data, information on symptoms, existing health issues and isolation status. It then displays the information on a map indication the pattern in which the virus is spreading. As of writing this post, over 60,000 people have already filled this survey.

• Various governments are using face-detection on CCTV cameras to scan the roads for people who are showing symptoms of the virus. It is also being used to ensure that people are wearing masks while commuting.

I know that all the above mentioned software are just for monitoring and survelliance. But in the case of a pandemic, I feel that controlling the spread of the disease is half the job done. The remaining part is to isolate the positive victims and treat them accordingly.

The most effective way to prevent transmission of any virus is immediate lockdown. Research shows that after imposing a lockdown, the transmission rate of the virus decreases drastically. However, such act can lead to stress on the economy, and the government should accept this con and work towards rebuilding the economy after the spread of the disease is controlled.

Another important way of preventing transmission is by increasing virus testing. Countries like Singapore have developed enough medical infrastructure (hospitals, beds, basic facilities) to comfortably accommodate a huge number of people (proportional to their population) and have tested a lot of potentially positive patients. They also quarantined people having mild symptoms, which countries like Australia, USA, Spain ignored to do so.

That is the reason why countries like Singapore, Colombia and South Korea have successfully controlled the virus spread and are on their way to normalcy. These countries are considered as models in terms of tackling with COVID-19.

I hope this pandemic acts as a wake-up call for all governments of the world to make Healthcare and Public Hygiene as their top priority. The USA spends close to $250 billion a year on the military. This should be changed and more spending should be done on healthcare infrastructure and general awareness about public hygiene.

World War 3 would be bacterial, not nuclear!

In the end, the actual difference lies in us taking Individual Responsibility for tackling this virus. Each and every individual of this country must follow the guidelines imposed by the government.

On this note, I would like to end this post. Please note that I am not an expert on such medical matters. I will link all the sites that I used as reference for the above content. If you find anything that is factually incorrect, please let me know so that I can make the changes.

Also if you find anything interesting apart from the points mentioned above, or if you have any thoughts to share, please do comment them below and I'll also learn something new :)

Thank you for reading! Please like the post, share and comment. Also consider subscribing!

Stay at home, stay safe, spend time productively :)

Take care!

Reference links -

• https://www.ictworks.org/digital-health-solutions-covid-response/#.XnulRXLhXIU

• http://openelis-global.org/

• http://www.weltelhealth.com/Home

• https://www.noviguide.com/#Diagram

• http://ncovcheck.com.s3-website.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws.com/index.html?lang=en#/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Service_Data

• https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615399/coronavirus-neural-network-can-help-spot-covid-19-in-chest-x-ray-pneumonia/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

• https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/coronavirus-india-developing-covid-19-tracker-cowin-20-app-reports-2201106