Introduction

Coronavirus, more precisely COVID 19 ( also known as SARS-CoV-2 virus), is spreading all over the world and infecting millions of people. Medical Institutes, Hospitals, Doctors, Pharma Companies, and other Vaccine research organizations are trying their best to fight with this invisible beast and save Mankind. 

Till now it has infected tens of millions of people all over the world and the number is growing continuously. This type of pandemic has not been seen or experienced by mankind for quite a long time in the history of this world. We are waiting for the proper vaccines to come to the market and expecting to take Vaccine shot pretty soon.

In this article, I am going to discuss how can modern technology such as AI, Deep Learning, Neural networks, etc can play a vital role to detect If someone is infected with this Virus. Also, How can we utilize the power of Artificial Intelligence to invent the Vaccine for this virus. So stick to me till the end of this article.

if you don’t have enough knowledge about AI ( Artificial Intelligence ), then I suggest you check my initial blog on AI Here first.

AI to detect Corona Virus 

There are two different ways a person can be tested for COVID 19.

RT – PCR

The normal procedure for a COVID-19 test is  RT-PCR ( reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction ). In this process, samples are taken from a person’s respiratory organs such as nose, throat, etc. In the laboratory, professionals run several tests on these samples using a set of chemicals. The purpose of this test is to find out if the RNA ( ribonucleic acid ) of COVID-19 is present in the samples. After removing all the fats and proteins, if the sample contains any RNA other than the person’s own RNA, that matches the nucleic acid of COVID 19, then he /she is most likely Corona positive. 

In general, this process takes 2 days to get results. Also, in the current scenario, due to the exponential increase of infections and limited kits available to conduct the tests, some centers are not able to deliver their services. An alternative to this is Chest CT.

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Chest CT

Chest CT ( also known as Chest computed tomography ) is the way to get scanned images of the human chest (along with chest radiography images and lung ultrasounds) that can be used to identify early detection of corona symptoms. 

Using AI algorithms and data science approach on these images, guided by other information e.g. the person’s travel history, other symptoms (e.g. fever ), and other lab tests, we can confirm if the person is CORONA POSITIVE.

Before we go into more technical details of how AI is in practice to detect COVID, I must give you some information about the evolution of this virus.

History of Wuhan Virus 

Some pneumonia cases were first found in December 2019 in a place called Wuhan, China. Death officials reported such cases to the WHO ( World Health Organisation ). Initially, when this infection started in Wuhan, scientists assumed the infection came from the fish market of China.

Some people said it could have come from bats, as people in China drink bat soup and it’s quite popular there. Also, the reason behind that statement is, there was a SARS outbreak in 2002 and the MERS outbreak in 2012, which has similar symptoms. Initially, they call it the Wuhan virus, Eventually, it became popular as coronavirus as it falls into the same category of SARS-CoV-2.

The origin of this outbreak is still unknown. There are many conspiracy theories going around the world regarding the outbreak of this virus. Within a very short time, the virus spread to more than 100 countries infecting millions of people. Many countries have faced challenges to fight this virus. Hundreds of thousands of people have died so far all over the world.

Europe, Australia, China, New Zealand had to cope up with this virus and the mortality graph is going downhill in those countries. However, the USA is in pretty bad shape.

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What is this Coronavirus?

2019 Coronavirus is a special type of virus, that creates respiratory illnesses to humans. If the conditions deteriorate, the person can die. The name “Corona” comes from the word “Crown”. There are Crown like structures on top of this virus. Initially, the virus was found on animals only. But the virus can transmit from animals to the human body through a process called “Mutation”. 

The virus can travel through droplets. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, droplets come on the surface floors around that person. When another person comes in proximity to that contaminated area where the droplets are and touches the surface it gets transmitted to the other person’s body. That’s the reason social distancing is important. It is recommended to clean your hands at regular intervals and wear your mask.

We still don’t know how long the virus can stay in the air inside droplets and if they are air-born. 

What is Contact Tracing

Contact tracing is the process of finding out the persons who were in proximity to an infected ( e.g. corona positive ) person. Contact tracing is an effective method to identify the possibility of more people affected by a viral disease such as COVID-19 and guiding them to take precautionary measures before they infect others. 

So basically when a person is declared corona positive, it is important to find out who were the other persons he met who were within 6 feet of him and spend more than 15 minutes time. Those people are more likely to get infected. So they should keep themselves isolated. 

This process can take lot of time to find out those people who were in close proximity to the infected person. Maybe they were traveling on the same plane, bus or car. So it can be very difficult to do contact tracing sometimes. It’s like an investigation work. But this method was used in the SARS outbreak in 2002 and also in Ebola Outbreak.

What does it do to us? 

Once the virus infects a human body, it enters into the healthy cell. It starts replicating itself inside the body. In 80% of cases, the symptoms are mild. In some cases, if the person is aged ( over 70 or 80 ) and already has pre-existing health conditions such as Diabetes etc, the chances of death increase. This virus enters into the lungs through mouth, nose, throat, bronchial tract, etc causing respiratory diseases. 

Some of the symptoms are 

• Fatigue
• Fiver
• Body aches
• Headache
• A sore throat
• Congestion or a runny nose
• Loss of taste
• Diarrhea

This virus can cause respiratory infections and lungs can be inflamed, which leads to pneumonia. 

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Statistics, total affected, total Number of deaths

This virus has killed millions of people all over the world and the number is increasing every day significantly. To get a better picture, please check this Link. Here you will get the country-wise total number of infections and Deaths, all over the world.

Because of the unique characteristic of this virus and lack of knowledge, Scientists and Virologists are taking time to develop the vaccine to stop this virus attacking and killing the human.

Chest imaging and AI to detect the Infection 

AI can be used to identify the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2  at an early stage.

The chest CT images can be used as an input to the AI system built using Neural Network and Deep learning ( Also known as Deep CNN or Deep Convolutional Neural Network ).

This system will analyze the Chest Scanned images of the COVID-19 patients who are in their early stages. This system can segregate patients with COVID-19 using classifiers e.g. Support Vector Machine ( SVM ), Random Forest, and Multilayer Perception ( MLP ).

To make the final decision this information needs to be supported by radiological data and other cynical information e.g. travel and exposure history, lymphocyte counts, etc.

First, the chest CT images/slices are fed to the Deep CNN model to identify only those images which have abnormal lung inflammation. Then the most abnormal images go through a second 

CANN model to identify the confirmed cases. Then other information e.g. Travel and exposure data, clinical info, etc along with the chest CT image data are fed to a final MLP layer to confirm the COVID-19 positive cases.

Stochastic Modelling 

Based on the evolution and characteristic of COVID-19, scientists have developed one mathematical modeling to keep track of the COVID cases. This is Schocastic Modeling but also knows as  SEIR modeling.

SEIR stands for Susceptible (S), Exposed (E), Infected (E), Hospitalized (H), and Recovered (R).  The following diagram shows a complete algorithm to understand how to keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.

Let’s consider Sq = A fracton of the Susceptible set of people who are isolated and quarantined

Let’s consider Eq = A fraction of the Exposed set of people who are isolated and quarantine.

So we can create an algorithm  as follows

Stochastic Model

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Impact on World Economy After Corona Virus

There had been a tremendous impact on the global economy due to coronavirus. Isolation and social distancing mean keeping citizens inside their houses. We are not allowed to go outside and eat, drink, shop, or party. That means shutting down the businesses as well. All the restaurants, shopping complexes, public gathering places are shut down. This means loss of jobs and loss of businesses. During the corona pandemic, the world economy has shrunk 3%  which is equivalent to trillions of dollars. 

The USA, being the financial capital of the world, is in pretty bad shape. Millions of people have already applied for unemployment and the number is growing. 

How AI can help to create Corona Vaccine?

Vaccines stimulate an infection in the human body to create white blood cells and antigens.

There are mainly three types of vaccines.

• Whole Pathogen vaccine
• Subunit vaccine
• Nucleic acid vaccine

The third one is the most important here, in the context of coronavirus.

Vaccine creation mainly depends on the three following factors. A virus e.g. COVID-19 consists of protein structures, which is a series of amino acids. To create a vaccine it is very important to understand how the protein structure works. 

Companies like AlphFold ( AI  company ) can help to understand the protein structure of SARS-CoV-2. Also, researchers of UTA Austin helped to understand the protein structure of the spike in the virus.

Some of the predicted structure of AlphaFold matches 100% of the SARS-CoV-2 protein structures. 

Another way AI is helping scientists to develop the Vaccines is to provide them all the necessary and related research papers very fast. AI systems helped to create a COVID-19 dataset which is valid and reliable that helped scientists to get the necessary information to work on the Virus protein structure faster.

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The vaccine research project depends on three important factors.

1. Massive data Analysis
2. Literature screening
3. Knowledge Mapping

Vaccines contain dead or weakened pathogens which can help the immune system makes antibodies. The RNA of coronavirus is covered by a protein structure. Using Big data and probability model, the system can help scientists to predict the protein structure. AI is much faster and more precise and accurate compared to a human. From this protein structure, scientists can create Vaccines that can be used safely in the human body.

The machine-learning algorithm developed by AI company Bluedot, first detected some outbreak of pneumonia in December 2019 in Wuhan, China which is parallel to the similar SARS outbreak in 2002. 

Early detection is just the first step. It is more important also to figure out how does this virus evolves and to get insights into how many people get affected.

London based AI company Benevolent AI, has done dedicated research to understand the characteristic of coronavirus from the data fed to its algorithm and trying to make meaningful insights available potentially to common people so they can be helped and take necessary Precautions.

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