There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world forever. Now that we are finally making progress in curbing the severity of the pandemic, let us take a look at possible technological advancements made while responding to COVID-19.
By Erik Bearman, Science Editor
COVID-A.I.
On New Years Eve, 2019, towards the start of the pandemic, BlueDot, a small company that analyzes and predicts outbreaks of disease, detected early signs of a potential pandemic “using data from ‘medical bulletins, even livestock reports, to predict where the virus would go next…And with that data it identified 12 of the 20 cities that would suffer first ‘” (cbsnews.com). Later on, California was able to predict which hospitals would be hit the hardest using BlueDot.
Using A.I. to map where infectious diseases may spread has long been a part of outbreak science. As COVID-19 ebbs, artificial intelligences like the ones used at BlueDot will become more widely used and may even help prevent the next pandemic from ruining the senior years of future generations.
COVID-Filter
In April of 2020, ExThera Medical received Emergency Use Authorization for a Seraph 100 Blood filter. ExThera was given EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) because the filter “showed encouraging preliminary results in critically ill COVID-19 patients at a military hospital in the U.S. and 14 other hospitals in Europe” (mddionline.com). The filter works in a two-step process:
- Blood flows from the patient and circulates through the filter. As it does, the blood passes over receptors that imitate the receptors that pathogens target when they enter us.
- The infectious material is absorbed by the beads which the receptors are attached to, allowing the filter to remove them from the patient’s bloodstream without adding anything to their blood which is returned to the patient with blood cells and proteins intact. (mddionline.com)
One day, these filters may be an everyday part of hospital equipment and could provide doctors the necessary time to treat patients. With future funding and development, they may be able to filter out harmful materials other than COVID-19.
COVID-Bees
Researchers in the Netherlands have trained bees to detect cases of COVID-19. This might seem crazy, but bees actually “have an unusually keen sense of smell” (www.reuters.com). The process used to train the bees was relatively simple: the researchers gave the bees sugar water as a reward after the bees found a sample infected with COVID-19. But, if the bees could not detect a sample of COVID-19, the researchers did not give them a reward.
Now, the bees are used to detect COVID-19 in humans and can “cut waiting times for test results to just seconds” (www.reuters.com). An unBEElievable idea can make way for faster testing in the future for other diseases. Meaning less funding will have to be put into developing testing technologies and more communities will be able to get rapid, accurate results. From bees to filters to A.I., science never lets a catastrophe go to waste.
First Editor-in-Chief: Elizabeth Shay
Sources