Scientists want to unleash a Bluetooth-powered ‘virtual virus’ to study COVID-19
This helps our real-time understanding of the pandemic
What about COVIDSafe?
Last year the Australian government released the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app. It was backed by an extensive government-funded media campaign andinitially adopted by millionsof users.
COVIDSafeworks byusing Bluetooth signals to record digital “handshakes” between the smartphone of a user and nearby contacts who also have the app. It stores this information in a form that can be retrospectively accessed if the device’s owner tests positive. Their contacts can then be traced and tested.
While the idea has merit, there have only beena handfulof instances where the app was able to pick up confirmed cases more effectively than human contact tracers. So is the marriage between Bluetooth and public health useless?
We don’t think so.
Spreading a Bluetooth-powered virtual virus
Social distancing works on all viruses, not just SARs-CoV-2 (the virus of the COVID-19 pandemic). For example, major COVID-19 lockdowns not only curbed the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but alsomitigated the spread of the common cold.
With this in mind, let’s return to the lack of information problem and consider a thought experiment: what if we could create a virtual virus that spreads exactly the same as COVID-19? Although this one would be harmless and traceable in real-time.
By studying how this virtual virus evolves, we would be gleaning important insight into how SARs-CoV-2 evolves. This could empower decision-makers to devise the best strategies to enforce restrictions and prevent the virus from spreading further.
To implement the framework, the mobile devices of a random subset of the population would be purposefully infected with the safe digital virus, which we call Safe Blues.
Then, based on the measurements of how this “infection” spreads, public health authorities could get a better picture of how the real coronavirus spreads.
Statistically, the number of cases and patterns presented on the Safe Blue app would follow similar trends to the real virus.
Of course, the actual individuals infected with SARs-CoV-2 and those infected with Safe Blues would not be the same. In fact, simulations have shown only a small fraction of the population would need to participate with a Safe Blues app for it to deliver reliable predictions.
It’s important to note Bluetooth signals don’t propagate like viruses. But if we generated hundreds of variants of Bluetooth-based virtual tokens, this ensemble could capture many of the social movement patterns that drive infection — and thus could be correlated with the real virus.
Where to now with Safe Blues?
Safe Blues’s machine learning methods have been developed and evaluated using mathematical simulation models. Initial results show that an ensemble of Safe Blues token strands can yield powerful estimates of actual epidemic behaviour.
The Safe Blues team is now working towards a system pilot at The University of Auckland. Using an experimental Safe Blues Android app, the aim is to generate and study how the virtual virus spreads in a campus setting.
The insights provided by the app could also be coupled with data fromwaste water measurementsand fromexisting social networkssuch as Google, Apple, or Facebook.
We believe virtual virus spread techniques such as Safe Blues could greatly contribute to our real-time understanding of this pandemic, as well as future epidemics.
This article byYoni Nazarathy, Associate Professor of Data Science,The University of Queensland, andPeter Taylor, Australian Laureate Fellow,The University of Melbourneis republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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