COVICT: an IoT based architecture for COVID-19 detection and contact tracing

The world we live in has been taken quite surprisingly by the outbreak of a novel virus namely SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 i.e. the disease associated with the virus, has not only shaken the world economy due to enforced lockdown but has also saturated the public health care systems of even most advanced countries due to its exponential spread. The fight against COVID-19 pandemic will continue until majority of world’s population get vaccinated or herd immunity is achieved. Many researchers have exploited the Artificial intelligence (AI) knacks based IoT architecture for early detection and monitoring of potential COVID-19 cases to control the transmission of the virus. However, the main cause of the spread is that people infected with COVID-19 do not show any symptoms and are asymptomatic but can still transmit virus to the masses. Researcher have introduced contact tracing applications to automatically detect contacts that can be infected by the index case. However, these fully automated contact tracing apps have not been accepted due to issues like privacy and cross-app compatibility. In the current study, an IoT based COVID-19 detection and monitoring system with semi-automated and improved contact tracing capability namely COVICT has been presented with application of real-time data of symptoms collected from individuals and contact tracing. The deployment of COVICT, the prediction of infected persons can be made more effective and contaminated areas can be identified to mitigate the further propagation of the virus by imposing Smart Lockdown. The proposed IoT based architecture can be quite helpful for regulatory authorities for policy making to fight COVID-19.