DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CORONAVIRUS TRACKING SYSTEM FOR INFECTED PATIENTS

1.1 Introduction

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infection which is as a result of a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection. For example, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) were known in 2002 and 2012 in that order was as a result of viruses analogous to SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless, SARS-CoV-2 has a higher range more the earlier information related to viruses and as a result the obscurity in the cure and management of COVID-19 (Zhong et al., 2020). 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.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

The current rampant coronavirus infection in humans, commonly known as COVID-19, a pandemic that may cause mortality in humans, has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO). COVID-19 is considered a zoonotic infectious disease that can spread amongst humans or animals to human (Zhou et al., 2020); when transmitted by humans, it could lead to serious respiratory conditions (Abdelhafiz et al., 2020 and Chandi et al., 2020). The key clinical signs and symptoms include fatigue, a fever of 39 degrees and above, dry cough, dyspnoea, fatigue, and myalgia, and in some severe cases, COVID-19 infection can cause kidney failure, severe pneumonia and acute respiratory syndrome, and even death (Abdelhafiz et al., 2020).

The novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first identified in Wuhan China in December 2019, has rapidly spread to almost every countries 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.

Contact tracing is the process of identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to a disease to prevent onward transmission. When systematically applied, contact tracing will break the chains of transmission of an infectious disease and is thus an essential public health tool for controlling infectious disease ouCOVID-19reaks. Contact tracing for COVID-19 requires identifying persons who may have been exposed to COVID-19 and following them up daily for 14 days from the last point of exposure.

The invention of Internet and of the Word Wide web offers great opportunities of revolutionizing people’s lives. Health care settings are increasing employing Information technology, which offers significant contribution in providing health care services by aiding cut costs and improving quality of health care (Blaya, Fraser, & Holt, 2010). In 2005 WHO passed a resolution, which enables member states to achieve collaboration and provision of mutual support in health systems integration aiming in improving health care, supporting surveillance activities and sharing knowledge (Simba, 2004).

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 neighbours 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. There may be considerable limitations to conducting COVID-19 contact tracing with this Manuel approach and other resource-limited settings. 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 is 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.

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1.3 Statement of Problem

Investigation revealed that the challenges identified include the challenge of structural neglect of healthcare infrastructure across all spectrums throughout the federation as a result of decades of underfunding by all tiers of government in Nigeria, inadequate testing of equipments, 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 Manuel 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. 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 is 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.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to design and implement a Coronavirus Tracking System for Infected Patients. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:

1. Create flexible and relatively easily maintained systems for Coronavirus diagnosis;
2. Examine the related architecture, models, technologies, and challenges of existing Coronavirus contact tracing approaches;
3. Prevent unauthorized access to information and misuse of the app or its processes;
4. Ascertain whether the Coronavirus diseases could be diagnosed based on signs and symptoms; and
5. Investigate how the automated Coronavirus patient contact tracing can be used to curtail the spread of Coronavirus.

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1.5 Significance of Study

The significance of expert systems in the diagnosis and reporting of coronavirus are too numerous to mention but a few has been listed out below;

1. It will help to retain the skill of an expert medical doctor in case of any eventuality;
2. It can support academic development;
3. It can be useful in many hospitals, both private and government, cases where the expert is not on seat;
4. Human expert development is a continuous exercise but an expert system is built only once and updated continuously with new technologies.

This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

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1.6 Scope of Study

The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of a Coronavirus Tracking System for Infected Patients.

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1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

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1.8 Definition of Terms

Registration: This means to keep records received from the management for reference purposes.

Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an Organization through the process of planning, Organization, directing and controlling

System: Physical component of a computer that is used to perform certain task.

Diagnose: The identifying of an illness or disorder in a patient through physical examination, medical tests, or other procedures