A Wireless System to Track Communicable Disease Outbreaks
Dali Ismail, Abusayeed M. Saifullah · 2024
Communicable viral diseases represent a grave threat to public life, activity, health, and economy, making it a critical global and social need to track their outbreaks. Of late, significant concerns have risen globally due to the unprecedented pandemic, so called COVID-19, caused by the global outbreak of the novel Coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. In this paper, we study tracking the spread of communicable diseases considering COVID-19. The unique characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 have made it extremely challenging to control its spread. Specifically, it spreads in a swift and uncontrolled manner. An infected person is tested only after showing the symptoms which typically happens two weeks after s/he gets infected. In this long incubation period, the viruses can spread across large areas and population, making their spread uncontrollable. To secure a community, it is hence very important to monitor and suppress both presymptomatic and asymptomatic spreads, in addition to symptomatic spreads. To do this, we propose a wireless system, called CovNet, which is a cloud-integrated wireless network system where a wireless signal outbreaks like SARS-CoV-2. CovNet simulates the Coronavirus pandemic in parallel with its outbreak. It is capable of doing both backward tracing (i.e., tracing all the people to whom the SARS-CoV-2 virus was transmitted from a COVID-19 patient) and forward tracing (i.e., tracing any further/future spread from him/her). CovNet does not need any specialized equipment. We have performed a proof-of-concept implementation and experimentation of the CovNet system.