A simulated measurement for COVID-19 pandemic using the effective reproductive number on an empirical portion of population: epidemiological models.

COVID-19 as a global pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the entire world. Projecting the future spread of the virus in relation to its characteristics for a specific suite of countries against a temporal trend can provide public health guidance to governments and organizations. Therefore, this paper presented an epidemiological comparison of the traditional SEIR model with an extended and modified version of the same model by splitting the infected compartment into asymptomatic mild and symptomatic severe. We then exposed our derived layered model into two distinct case studies with variations in mitigation strategies and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as a matter of benchmarking and comparison. We focused on exploring the United Arab Emirates (a small yet urban centre (where clear sequential stages NPIs were implemented). Further, we concentrated on extending the models by utilizing the effective reproductive number (R t) estimated against time, a more realistic than the static R 0, to assess the potential impact of NPIs within each case study. Compared to the traditional SEIR model, the results supported the modified model as being more sensitive in terms of peaks of simulated cases and flattening determinations.

Telehealth utilization during the Covid-19 pandemic: A systematic review.

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, different technologies, including telehealth, are maximised to mitigate the risks and consequences of the disease. Telehealth has been widely utilised because of its usability and safety in providing healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a systematic literature review which provides extensive evidence on the impact of COVID-19 through telehealth and which covers multiple directions in a large-scale research remains lacking. This study aims to review telehealth literature comprehensively since the pandemic started. It also aims to map the research landscape into a coherent taxonomy and characterise this emerging field in terms of motivations, open challenges and recommendations. Articles related to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic were systematically searched in the WOS, IEEE, Science Direct, Springer and Scopus databases. The final set included (n = 86) articles discussing telehealth applications with respect to (i) control (n = 25), (ii) technology (n = 14) and (iii) medical procedure (n = 47). Since the beginning of the pandemic, telehealth has been presented in diverse cases. However, it still warrants further attention. Regardless of category, the articles focused on the challenges which hinder the maximisation of telehealth in such times and how to address them. With the rapid increase in the utilization of telehealth in different specialised hospitals and clinics, a potential framework which reflects the authors' implications of the future application and opportunities of telehealth has been established. This article improves our understanding and reveals the full potential of telehealth during these difficult times and beyond.

Measurement Method for Evaluating the Lockdown Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected day to day life and slowed down the global economy. Most countries are enforcing strict quarantine to control the havoc of this highly contagious disease. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many data analyses have been done to provide close support to decision-makers. We propose a method comprising data analytics and machine learning classification for evaluating the effectiveness of lockdown regulations. Lockdown regulations should be reviewed on a regular basis by governments, to enable reasonable control over the outbreak. The model aims to measure the efficiency of lockdown procedures for various countries. The model shows a direct correlation between lockdown procedures and the infection rate. Lockdown efficiency is measured by finding a correlation coefficient between lockdown attributes and the infection rate. The lockdown attributes include retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces, residential, and schools. Our results show that combining all the independent attributes in our study resulted in a higher correlation (0.68) to the dependent value Interquartile 3 (Q3). Mean Absolute Error (MAE) was found to be the least value when combining all attributes.