How to prevent community outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus
The Coronavirus has affected the entire world. Various safety measures like self-isolation and social distancing were followed from the beginning. In March 2020, the Government of India had enforced a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the virus. During the four long months of lockdown, the number of COVID confirmed patients were increasing. One of the main reasons behind this was the community outbreaks. In this particular time period, most people were following social distancing, using masks, and using disinfectants. Even after all these precautions, a large number of people are currently CORONA active, some are recovering and some are dying as well.
A large number of people were not following the lockdown protocol. Out of this group of people, some of them were lucky that they are not COVID patients. Others have become positive cases due to this virus. Some of them become silent spreaders. The seemingly healthy people sometimes come in contact with positive COVID patients. Being unmindful of the consequences, they end up spreading the virus to the set of people in his/her vicinity. They themselves never become patients. These people who end up being carriers of the virus are known as silent spreaders. They don’t show the actual symptoms of the virus. They are also called asymptomatic. They are the key to community spreading.
The Vital Analysing Tool
A constant check of some of the body vitals is required by every individual, whenever he/she is going to places that usually get crowded during the busy hours of the day. A wearable device linked to a mobile application can be developed which takes some of the body's vital information like the Heart Rate, Body Temperature, and Blood Oxygen levels of the user. The wearable device can be made by connecting a pulse oximeter sensor and an LM35 temperature.
Wearable Device Circuit Schematic
The phone application controls the measuring functionality of the device and will display the values measured. Along with the vitals, the app takes the Antibody test information of the user. This information is then saved in a text file on their device. This can be made a cross-platform application using flutter. The wearable device and the app is connected wirelessly using the Bluetooth connection protocols.
Phone Application User Interface for the Wearable Device
The user can use the measured device information and the antibody test results to a web application which analyses the data entered based on mode of analysis (Negative or Positive). The results of the mode-based analysis are generated correspondingly. The web application development for the patient data analysis is done by developing custom Tensorflow models and importing them in its Flask script. Each analysis mode has its own model. Both the models can be trained using previous active and recovered patient data.
Based on the results generated after the mode-based model analysis, the user or the patient can be declared to be Asymptomatic or not. The generated results after the analysis are saved in a CSV file.
Negative Mode Patient Data Analysis
Negative and Positive Results
Where is the security of the devices?
The application developed for the device has a record of all the previously connected wearable devices. Each record has options of reconnecting to that device and to reset the Bluetooth connection password. In case of the password reset option, it allows the user to change the password of that Bluetooth connection record. To change the password of the actual Bluetooth connection, we will have to pass on some serial commands which sets the connection with the new password.
Password Reset
The reconnect option invokes the Bluetooth search protocol which searches the device whose Bluetooth connection name is same as that of the name of the connection in that record and automatically keys in the password.
Bluetooth Connection
In this manner, all the connection records are being secured with a master password. Without this password, the user won’t be able to connect his/her device to the app.
What is the outcome?
With the help of this technology, the general public will be aware of the level safety they have been. This will also allow them to bring out more safety measures that they can follow and be safe. This helps is preventing further community outbreaks in crowded areas.
By,
Prof. Samatha R S, CSE Faculty
Soumik Mukherjee, EEE Dept Student