Design and Implementation of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Contact Tracking System for Infected Patients

Design and Implementation of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Contact Tracking System for Infected Patients

ABSTRACT

A disease tracking system is basically a practice in the field of epidemiology which involves monitoring of a disease, especially an epidemic in order to establish patterns of progression. For this study we are going to be considering the most recent epidemic of the 21st century; the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease) pandemic.

The primary and key role of this disease tracking system is to predict, observe and minimize the harm caused by the outbreak, epidemic and pandemic situation. It also plays the role of increasing knowledge about relevant factors which contribute to those circumstances. It is made particularly successful critically by the practice of disease case reporting.

Reporting of disease outbreak incidents can be done by gathering cases from hospitals which could then now be collated and made public. This is a way to quickly contain hot spots for the particular disease we are tracking.
Most times, there is a mandatory reporting policy in order to get quick, direct and accurate information so as to find solutions quickly to the problems identified through those information.

Presently for the COVID-19 pandemic, the World health Organisation is the lead agency for the coordination of global responses to the pandemic. It has a number websites for specific diseases and has active teams in countries all over the world.

The study covers COVID-19 documentation and control at least in the Nigerian society and also internationally. It focuses particularly on the disease tracking system. We also examine challenges and techniques to address them. For this project we would examine on a smaller scale and test it before then broadening the scope.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

A disease tracking system is basically a practice in the field of epidemiology which involves monitoring of a disease, especially an epidemic to establish patterns of progression. For this study we are going to be considering the most recent epidemic of the 21st century; the COVID-19(Corona virus Disease) pandemic. The primary and key role of this disease tracking system is to predict, observe and minimize the harm caused by the outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic situation. It also plays the role of increasing knowledge about relevant factors which contribute to those circumstances. It is made particularly successful critically by the practice of disease case reporting.

Reporting of disease outbreak incidents can be done by gathering cases from hospitals which could then now be collated and made public. This is a way to quickly contain hot spots for the disease we are tracking. Most times, there is a mandatory reporting policy to get quick, direct, and accurate information so as to find solutions quickly to the problems identified through that information.

The novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first identified in Wuhan China in December 2019, has rapidly spread to almost every country of the world. The disease is caused by a new and severe type of Coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2). The infection has no immediate treatment and vaccine, and it has according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) become a worldwide pandemic causing significant morbidity and mortality. There are 1,603,428 confirmed cases, 356,440 recoveries from the illness and 95,714 deaths worldwide as of April 9, 2020 (Worldometers, 2020). On February 27, 2020, an Italian citizen became the index case for COVID-19 in Nigeria and as at April 9, 2020, there were 288 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria with 51 discharges and 7 deaths (Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, 2020).

To control the spread of COVID-19, interventions need to break the chains of human-to-human transmission, ensuring that the number of new cases generated by each confirmed case is maintained below 1 (effective reproduction number < 1). As part of a comprehensive strategy, contact tracing are critical activities to reduce transmission and control the epidemic.

The current Manuel contact tracing and screening activities in Nigeria can be supported by modern information technologies through use of mobile phone and text communication with possible Coronavirus contacts. The ability to rapidly collect and access high quality data presents a notable benefit of the proposed system.

In contact tracing, every index case is asked to name his or her contacts in other terms graphing neighbors who may be infected, then the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) seeks out these contacts as time and resources permit to test whether they are infected and isolate them if so.

The proposed COVID-19 contact tracing in general aims to identify individuals who may have had contact with COVID-19 patient. Tracing those who have been exposed to Covid-19 is an important step in winding down socially and economically crippling lockdowns. Manual tracing is resource-intensive and ineffective. Several countries, including Singapore and Australia, have adopted smartphone apps for tracing Covid-19 cases.

Despite these advancements in technology that can improve COVID-19 Contact tracing, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has fallen short in adopting them. It is on this note that the study is undertaken to establish an effective and efficient way of contact tracing using mobile application system. The study aimed at incorporating USSD and Android technology in contact tracing and screening activities in order to target a larger population of Nigerians and improve Covid-19 contact tracing in Nigeria.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The Nigeria center for disease and control (NCDC) is facing significant challenges as it relates to combating the spread of Coronavirus in Nigeria. The challenges identified include the challenge of structural neglect of healthcare infrastructure across all spectrums throughout the federation because of decades of underfunding by all tiers of government in Nigeria, inadequate testing equipment’s, inefficiencies in data collection and reporting COVID-19 patients and their contacts. Because of these challenges, the number of COVID-19 cases is fast increasing daily.

The NCDC officials are conducting COVID-19 contact tracing by visiting cases’ homes and using a national C OVID-19contact tracing form to screen household contacts. Health care workers record contacts’ responses directly onto the paper form and later enter these data into a Microsoft Excel database by hand. These data are also used to generate summary reports.

There may be considerable limitations to conducting COVID-19 contact tracing with this manual approach and other resource-limited settings. For example, the use of paper forms may result in inefficiencies in data collection, storage, and retrieval and errors (e.g., missing, incorrect, or illogical values). In addition, summary reports must be generated by hand. This process is not timely and can take a significant number of days before the limited number of health workers are able to trace and isolate contacts in different places.

Thus, this thesis seeks to propose an automated system that will use USSD, and Android based applications for COVID-19 contact tracing and screening. The system is also integrated to a web dashboard, which provides various reports and analytics from a central data store. The real time data submission to a central data store enables NCDC officials to make decisions faster and in effective manner.

1.3 Aims an Objective of the Study

The main thrust of this thesis is to design an automated Coronavirus patient contact tracing using mobile application.

The study sought to examine the following specific objectives.

1. To investigate how the automated Coronavirus patient contact tracing using mobile application. can be used to curtail the spread of COVID-19.
2. To examine the related architecture, models, technologies, and challenges of existing COVID-19 contact tracing approaches.
3. To develop, design and test a mobile-based system for COVID-19 contact tracing and
4. To validate the developed

1.4 Ethical Considerations

1. There are a cluster of related ethical concerns around privacy, confidentiality, and security. The apps and processes around their use must:
2. be designed and implemented to minimise impact on privacy, with guarantees around limited use.
3. Minimise the use of identifiable information and protect any identifiable information which is used.
4. be designed and implemented in ways that prevent unauthorized access to information and misuse of the app or its processes.

1.5 Scope of study

This research specifically focused on COVID-19 contact tracing methods currently in practice in Nigeria based on the guidelines developed by Ministry of Health and international guidelines laid down by World Health Organization. The study is limited target users included COVID-19 health workers, Coronavirus contacts. The deliverable of this research was a mobile-based system and a web application. This involved development of an Android application, which allowed health workers to trace COVID-19 contacts, and a USSD application, which enabled the COVID-19 contacts to screen their symptoms and risk factors. The web dashboard allowed display and presentation of the various analytics and reports as collected from the Android and USSD applications.

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