Innovative IoT-Based Wristlet for Early COVID-19 Detection and Monitoring Among Students

The current global issue of the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the push and utilization of all available means to halt its spread. COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease, and continuously monitoring early symptoms could help avert catastrophic devastation. This paper proposes an innovative use of the Internet of Things (IoT) enabled system to efficiently and effectively detect early COVID-19 signs at a relatively low cost. This study adopted an experimental approach in designing and constructing a low-cost hardware system using a Wi-Fi enabled microcontroller, a temperature sensor, and a heart rate sensor for students. The proposed system detected and distinguished normal and abnormal temperature, regular and irregular heartbeat and constantly displayed the student's status in a mobile application. Consistent tests proved that the developed IoT-enabled system was reliable, responsive, and cost-effective. The mass production of this device will aid in the early detection of the disease, thereby mitigating the spread among students, particularly in underdeveloped countries. The paper's merit stems from the microcontroller's intelligence programming and the sensor's operation via the mobile application, which enables low-cost early identification of abnormal temperature and heartbeat irregularities. © 2022, Mathematical Modelling of Engineering Problems. All Rights Reserved.

COVID-19 Infected Staff during the First Wave at General Out-Patient Clinic of Barau Dikko University Teaching Hospital, Kaduna: Brief Communication

COVID 19 viral infection is a rapidly spreading droplets infection that has a global impact. Kaduna is one of the states in Nigeria with a high number of COVID-19 infected individuals. Some staff of Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Kaduna (BDTH) were infected with COVID-19 during the initial period of the pandemic. Most of the infected staff were from the General Out-Patient Clinic (GOPC), as it was the only Department with up to 11 staff infected during this initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic. This had led to the temporary closure of the Department. The aim of this paper is to characterize the GOPC Staff that tested positive to COVID-19 following previous contact with COVID-19 patients that were seen at the GOPC during the first wave of the pandemic. This is with the view to consider GOPC staff as high risk and frontline health workers for COVID 19. It was a retrospective study, and data were collected from the record of all the staff of the GOPC who were traced to have had contact with the COVID-19 positive patients and were also tested positive. Eleven (34%) out of the 32 staff were infected with COVID-19 at the GOPC. Only 1 staff was above 50 years. Most of them had mild symptoms and had side effects from the antiviral drugs. Staff of the GOPC are at risk of COVID-19 infection and should be considered frontline workers for COVID-19.