The WHO has warned the world against
‘infodemic’ and urged caution when interpreting new information on cases of
COVID-19 as the data currently available is insufficient for a proper
understanding of how the virus works and acts in humans.
The organisation has a point. The attention
COVID-19 is getting from the mass media can be explained by the novelty of the
disease, but the numbers do not correlate with the hype. For instance, since
the beginning of winter in the U.S. alone, the seasonal flu has taken over
10,000 lives – far more than the new virus – and the global annual toll is
usually between 290,000 and 650,000 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2020). During the H1N1 outbreak in 2009–2010, at least 150,000 people died in
the first year, with some estimates going as high as 500,000 (Dawood et al.
2012).
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In relative numbers, global pandemics
usually take lives of 0.01–0.02% of the infected population. For SARS this
number was around 10%, for MERS and Ebola – around 40% (Fan et al. 2018). Among
people with confirmed COVID-19 infections, 4.7% were classified as critical,
13.8% as severe and 80.9% as mild. The coronavirus’s fatality rate is estimated
to be in the range of 0.5–4%, ie similar to that of seasonal flu (Yanping
2020). The latter is rarely diagnosed in a laboratory setting, and many people
with COVID-19 could have also abstained from visiting a doctor, which means
that the official mortality rate might be inflated – as happened, for example,
in the beginning of the H1N1 outbreak (Baumgaertner 2020).
Healthcare Technology Coming to the Fore
If there is anything positive to come out
of the emergence of COVID-19, it is how technology has played a prominent role
in information, prevention and treatment.
A Toronto-based health-monitoring platform
beat both the Chinese authorities and WHO to officially going public in early
January on the virus when it notified its customers about the outbreak on
December 31.
BlueDot uses AI-driven algorithms to
predict the spread of diseases through searching news reports and airline
ticketing data (Niiler 2020). Further data and information from international
news reports in 65 languages, official announcements and animal and plant
disease networks give clients advance notice of danger areas.
Public information was also central in a
mapping project at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. In response to
the public health emergency, the faculty devised an online dashboard for
tracking and visualising of daily reported cases (systems.jhu.edu). With data
collected from official healthcare sites and sources, the aim of the dashboard
was to provide transparent information about the situation as it unfolded. How
else could healthcare use such technology for protection of public health?
Additionally, robotics and telemedicine
have shone during the virus spread as doctors in facilities around the world
have resorted to using robots in isolation units for treatment of COVID-19
cases. In the U.S., at the Providence Regional Medical Centre in Washington, a
robot equipped with a stethoscope, assisted doctors with vitals and
communication via a screen (Staines 2020). The deployment of the robot reduced
staff contact with a male patient, allowing medics to observe him as they moved
the robot around the isolation area.
Panic-Built Hospitals
In Wuhan, reports persist of overcrowded
hospitals, lack of medical personnel, poor working conditions and a shortage of
test kits, protective gear, etc. In January, China announced (People’s Daily
2020) the construction of two emergency hospitals there. They are located about
40km apart and have a total of 2,600 beds for patients in serious condition.
Each was completed in 10 days, with the initial plan being 6 days.
Huoshenshan Hospital opened on February 3,
with an area of 25,000 square metres and 1,000 beds. It has been staffed with
1,400 military medics of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The other one,
the 1,300-bed Leishenshan Hospital, started operations on February 5.
On February 16, Qiboshan Hospital in
Zhengzhou, Henan Province, began to admit COVID-19 patients. It has 800 beds
and is staffed with over 200 medical workers (Ecns 2020). Two days later, a
city in Hubei Province, Huanggang, added another 400-bed makeshift facility,
rebuilt from the maternity and childcare hospital, for treating COVID-19
patients. 150 doctors and nurses have been dispatched there (Xinhua 2020a).
With no time for planning or consultations,
Chinese officials have used blueprints from the Xiaotangshan Hospital in
Beijing (Holland and Lin 2020). This 1,000-bed facility was built in seven days
during the SARS epidemic in 2003. The hospital admitted one-seventh of the SARS
patients in the country within two months, an unprecedented event in the
history of medicine. After the epidemic ended, the hospital was abandoned, but
has been renovated and put in use for the current outbreak (Wen 2020).
In all the cases, these are not typical,
permanent medical facilities, more of disease management centres to be used for
a limited period of time. They were built using prefabricated units –
fully-assembled, factory-made rooms. Such modular construction has been applied
in emergency scenarios in other parts of the world, to assemble a
rapid-response medical facility, and it is widely used in China, eg for high-rise
buildings (Quito 2020).
The Rise of the Remote Healthcare Congress
Scores of healthcare meetings around the
globe already offer the opportunity for delegates to attend remotely. All you
need is a good Internet connection and a quiet place to watch and you’re
set.The reasons for the rise in provision of remote congress attendance range
from reducing the global carbon footprint to time restrictions for busy
professionals. Surmounting the challenge of travelling in the face of a
coronavirus hasn’t been a typical reason for attending congresses via
tele-commute. However, the threat of spread of COVID-19 and restrictions on
travel in some cases have highlighted the advantages of remote congress.
Drone Surveillance and Tech Detection for
Spread Prevention
In healthcare, drones to date have
traditionally been used to deliver supplies to remote or inaccessible areas. In
the face of the COVID-19, they have been deployed in China to press people into
donning protective facemasks as part of multiple measures to control the virus.
Several online videos depict urban scenes
where drones shame offenders for failing to wear masks. Authorities in rural
China were also using drones to keep an eye on citizens out and about without
facemasks (rte.ie).
Drones have also been pressed into action to
spray disinfectant against virus spread in key public potential contagion areas
like train stations
