CovChain: Blockchain-Enabled Identity Preservation and Anti-Infodemics for COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The intangible nature of the COVID-19 virus and the changing strains have created panic and fear among people, leading to an increase in discrimination against COVID-19 positive patients and their families in society. Moreover, the spread of infodemics creates daunting challenges for peaceful livelihood and fighting the pandemic. In this article, we propose CovChain, a blockchain-based Internet of Things solution for identity preservation and anti-infodemics. Toward this, we propose storing patient information on a private blockchain and exploiting its immutability feature, which helps combat infodemics. We further propose encrypting the data using a distributed attribute-based encryption (d-ABE) scheme to facilitate restricted access to information based on the clearance level. We also propose reducing the load on the miners by using geographically-aware fog nodes. As data in a blockchain is immutable, we delete the blocks corresponding to recovering patients and store the information in a forked CovChain. The cardinality of the two chains helps in maintaining a global census by the cloud servers. Through system implementations, we present the feasibility of CovChain on resource-constrained devices within tolerable delays of 1 s, upload and download rates of 35 kb/s, and CPU (single-core) and memory utilization under 70 percent.