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Corona Virus Disease (COVID 19): Analysis and Design of an Alert and Real-time
Tracking System

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DOI: 10.30534/ijeter/2020/62852020

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 ISSN 2347 - 3983
Volume 8. No. 5, May 2020
Chinecherem Umezuruike et al., International
International Journal Journal of EmergingTrends
of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research, Research
in Engineering 8(5), May 2020, 1854– 1859
Available Online at http://www.warse.org/IJETER/static/pdf/file/ijeter62852020.pdf
https://doi.org/10.30534/ijeter/2020/62852020

Corona Virus Disease (COVID 19): Analysis and Design of an Alert

and Real-time Tracking System
Chinecherem Umezuruike1, Wilson Nwankwo2, Prisca Tibenderana3, John Patrick Assimwe4 , Muhirwa Ronald5
1
Department of Information Technology, Kampala International University, Kampala Uganda, cumezuruike@kiu.ac.ug
2
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Edo University Iyamho, Nigeria, nwankwo.wilson@edouniversity.edu.ng
3
Chief University Librarian, Kampala International University, Kampala Uganda, ptibenderana@kiu.ac.ug
4
Department of Information Technology, Kampala International University, Kampala Uganda, jp.asiimwe@kiu.ac.ug
5
Department of Information Technology, Kampala International University, Kampala Uganda, ald6472@gmail.com

ABSTRACT are inequitably distributed with Africa being the worst hit in
Microscopic agents such as viruses, protozoa, bacteria, most cases. In the 21st century, advances in information
fungi, etc. are common aetiologic agents in most infections communication technologies (ICTs) have played vital roles
affecting man. Whereas some infectious diseases are in the management of diseases, disease transmission,
localized owing to the unique geospatial and biochemical treatment, and prevention. ICTs have proved effective and
characteristics of the aetiologic agents, others are not bound efficient tools in the management of a plethora of diseases
by such restrictions hence their manifest tendencies towards such as Cholera, Malaria, Hypertension, etc. It is believed
evolving an epidemic or even a pandemic. CoVID-19 sprang that suitable technologies could be harnessed for managing
up in Wuhan China in November 2019 and was declared a COVID-19.Through the integration of technology in the
pandemic by the in January 2020 World Health Organization spectrum, instrumentation and control campaigns, robust
(WHO). Like the Spanish flu of 1918 that claimed millions systems including those with real-time capabilities have
of lives, the COVID-19 has caused the demise of thousands been developed and implemented across different
with China, Italy, Spain and the USA having the highest socioeconomic sectors of the global society including the
statistics on infection and mortality rates. Regardless of health sector. Alert systems have been deployed for
existing sophisticated technologies and medical science, the managing natural disasters [1] [2] [3] In the area of public
spread has continued to surge high. Tracking of suspected health management, medical alert system have been
carriers (cases) has been difficult, thereby increasing the risk developed to manage patients [4].
of spread. As a novel infection, real-time information
management beyond national geographical borders is vital to In this paper a COVID 19 tracking and alert system is
the success of any disease management campaign. proposed. The prototype would be a software with web and
Currently, information on the Covid-19 and applicable mobile components. Using these platforms, information
management procedures in most countries is limited thus dissemination, disease prevalence and position tracking of
creating a knowledge and management gap among the carriers, confirmed carriers and status of treated patients
populace and even health management personnel especially could be easily managed.
in areas susceptible to the pandemic. In response to the
aforementioned, this paper proposes an Alert and Tracking 1.1 Aetiology of COVID-19
System (CVATS) that enhances information dissemination,
disease management, tracking of cases, and management of Every disease irrespective of the infectious agent presents a
confirmed cases. The system follows an object-oriented challenge especially when it is novel like COVID-19. Like
approach in articulating the various actors and evolves a other infectious diseases the corona virus present some
model that could be implemented on both web and mobile symptoms in the infected patient. However, in some
platforms. On mobile platform, it employs google maps and individuals, the disease is asymptomatic thus posing a
could be used to track persons as well as geographical areas special concern as it could spread unnoticed through the
with prevalence of infections. droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose, mouth, eyes, or
other body cavities of asymptomatic patients [5]. The
Key words: COVID-19, Corona Virus, Epidemic, incubation period of the virus is between 1-14 days within
Pandemic, Infectious disease, Informatics which there may be visible symptoms. Thus, the affected
person may be living with the virus with or without
1. INTRODUCTION symptoms. The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are
fever, tiredness, and dry cough [6]. The symptoms indicate
In many cases, medical science and medicaments have the level of infection, which ranges from mild infection,
prevailed over diseases though knowledge, expertise, severe infection, and critical infection. The symptoms are
capacity and medicaments applied to disease management well-documented and include:

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1. Uncomplicated (mild) Illness that starts with mild Uganda has an equatorial climate, with a mean annual
fever, sore throat, sneezing, dry cough, naso- temperature of 16º C in the southwest highlands, 25º C in the
pharyngeal congestion, headache, malaise, muscle northwest, and often exceeds 30º C in the northeast. Rainfall
pain, and breathlessness. These symptoms which occurs regularly in northeast Uganda, while the south has
accompany upper respiratory tract viral infection two rainy seasons [10]. With population estimated at
[7] are pronounced and often associated with the 41,263,225 as at April 2020 [11], the citizenry depend
sinuses, throat, airways, lungs,etc. mainly on agriculture and tourism for livelihood.
2. Symptoms like shortness of breath (tachypnea in
children) and dry cough may not be accompanied
by signs of pneumonia. 1.2.1 Public Health
3. Acute Pneumonia with severe dyspnea, fever,
respiratory difficulties, hypoxia, tachypnea (35 Like every other nation of the world, Uganda have had its
breaths/min or higher), and hypoxia. Fever may be fair share of health concerns such as HIV and malaria to
moderate but sometimes absent. It may present mention but few. Through its ministry of health, projects
cyanosis in children in which case clinical have been initiated to manage and curb epidemics and
diagnosis including radiologic imaging would be communicable diseases. Such projects include the Uganda
employed to exclude complications [8]. Population Based HIV Impact Assessment (UPBHIA) which
4. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) that takes HIV counselling and testing to homes; the Mosquito
suggests fresh onset severe respiratory failure Net Distribution Campaign which ensures distribution of
and/or worsening pathophysiological conditions. mosquito nets to curb malaria spread, etc [12]. With the
Differential diagnosis of ARDS could be done outbreak of COVID-19, and the identification of an index
based on the extent of hypoxia using PaO2/FiO2 as case on 21 March 2020 several operational measures are
reference point being examined and undertaken to curb the menace.
5. Sepsis, a life-threatening organ dysfunction often Statistics from the ministry of health shows that as at 28
caused by impaired host response to infection with April 2020, 27,275 persons have undergone tests with 79
organ dysfunction [8]. Sepsis is characterized by a positive cases recorded 52 recoveries, 14 undergoing
set of signs/symptoms indicating multi-organ treatment and some persons repatriated respectively. Table 1
involvement, which include severe dyspnea, is a distribution based on age of the infected person (see also
hypoxemia, altered mental status, renal impairment Figure 2) [13]. It may be submitted that the country is
with reduced urine output, tachycardia and making some progress in managing the pandemic.
pathophysiological or blood chemistry reports of Nevertheless, the country is in search of innovative solutions
acidosis, hyperbilirubinemia, high lactate, that could aid in combatting the menace. Accordingly, this
coagulopathy, and thrombocytopenia [8] [9]. paper is intended to provide a technology-enhanced solution
that would promote case tracking and management.
1.2 Ugandan, COVID-19, and Technology-enhanced
Healthcare Table 1: COVID-19 case distribution by age
S/N Age Ugandan Indigene
Uganda is located in southeast Africa between the latitude Positive cases
1.1027° N and longitude 32.3968° E. with a land surface of
241,139 square kilometers. The country has borders with the 1 00 - 09 5
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South 2 10 -19 4
Sudan, and Tanzania (see Figure 1) 3 20 - 29 15
4 30 - 39 21
5 40 - 49 7
6 50 - 59 7
7 60 - 69 5
8 70 - 79 0

Figure 1 : Uganda map showing boader countries (Source:

Maps of world) Figure 2: Case distribution based on age
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Chinecherem Umezuruike et al., International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research, 8(5), May 2020, 1854– 1859

Since the identification of its index case, the Ugandan Health The Hardware utilized are: PC@2.80 GHZ with 16GB RAM
authorities initiated some measures to check the effect of the running Microsoft Windows 10; Tecno mobile Tablet, with
pandemic. The primary measure undertaken was a partial android 8.0 installed.
lockdown on all social and economic activities with
exception of agriculture, cargo transit, and logistics of The software platform for requirements engineering,
medicals and essential service operatives. These measures analysis, and design are:
have helped in managing the situation but with some Microsoft Visual Studio 2019(CE), Android studio 3.5,
extensive economic burden on the nation. The economy has MySQL DBMS, and SQL Lite
declined with remarkable downturn on transportation
businesses, and tourism, which are key contributors to the 3. DISCUSSION
Gross Domestic Product of the nation. Though agricultural
operations are excluded in the lockdown order, the 3.1 Analysis of the Proposed Alert and Tracking System
distribution and preservation of the products have been
seriously marred by transportation challenges. With the To analyze the proposed system, we employed the use case
growing new cases coming from truck drivers, it has become diagram. The use case diagram in Figure 3 models the
imperative that there is a gap in the control of COVID-19 system at the interaction level. Use case provides an efficient
hence the need to track truck drivers and truck movements tool for representing the functionality of the system at the
within and around the borders in the country. level of interaction among actors and/or objects. Three
categories of actors were recognized: officers
1.2.2. Technological Solutions and Health Management (medical/health personnel and volunteers), cases (also called
patients), and guests.
Technology has played a significant role in the detection,
prevention and control of public health problems [14] [15]. We adopted the use of the technical term ‘case’ in place of
Sophisticated evolutionary technologies have been applied to ‘patient’ convention. Officer represents any medic or
various areas of health care delivery. Notable systems paramedic with specialized skill in managing cases. Guest
include clinical decision support systems, expert systems, represents any user of the system who could report an issue;
electronic health systems, to mention but few. To a great request for information, a visitor to the country,etc. The use
extent, computing and information technologies have case diagram presents various actions supported on the
demystify diagnosis and management of complex medical system by way of use cases. The following use cases are
cases as they are employed at various levels ranging from notable: identification of cases, documentation, coding,
information gathering, documentation, intelligent insights to tracking cases, reporting of suspected cases, and automated
accurate decision making. Modern ICTs readily augment invitation of ambulances for case evacuation, and
human expertise in several ways, such as: system-enabled management. Incorporated in the system is a tracking
diagnosis, disease management, drug administration, expert functionality that augments the effort of public health
prognosis, etc. With the outbreak of COVID 19, tracking of workers in tracking geographical positions of cases using
cases has been challenging in prevalent regions and less codes assigned to suspected cases, confirmed cases, and
prevalent regions alike. Having regard to the foregoing, this treated cases.
work proposes a full tracking system to augment the
activities of public health workers and security agencies in In addition to confirmed cases, the codes may also be
tracking cases from the point of entry and association with attached to persons such as truck drivers at the point of entry
cases. to Uganda (usually at the borders or airports) across all
districts/states. When cases are confirmed codes would be
2. METHODOLOGY assigned at public health facilities. In the event of a
suspected outbreak in a less-prevalent region, the codes are
The object-oriented approach (OOADM) was strictly fed into the system to track the geographical location of
adopted owing to the ease at which the system problem cases. A centralized database is available to sustain data
domain could be decomposed into participating components persistence.
[15] [16]. System extensibility was also considered as
against the limitations of some methodologies [16] 3.2 System Design
.
The procedures adopted included: general survey and Figure 4 presents a class diagram of the system. The class
documentation of covid-19 cases and public health diagram models the system structure at a lower level as
technology requirements in uganda; conceptualization of an against the high-level structure presented in figure 5. The
automated multi-platform model with requirements, actors, various use cases in figure 3 are translated to objects in
inputs, processing and outputs defined. Figure 4. The class diagram also defines the properties of
interest. For simplicity, the methods are not indicated in the
To produce valid specifications of the proposed system, the class diagram. The class diagram did not include the officer
following OOAD components were employed: use cases, and guest as they would be enmeshed in the person super
class diagrams, and component diagrams respectively. object.

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Figure 5: High-level model of the system using component

diagram

3.3 Implementation

Figure 3: Use Case Diagram of the proposed system The system is code-named COVID-19 Alert and Tracking
System. It is would be a portable system operable on
different platforms (Web, Smartphones and other
information dissemination platforms). Mobile development
is done using android studio whereas the web front end is
developed using ASP.Net Core on Microsoft Visual Studio
2019 platform. The software system comprises modules:
login/sign-up, coding, case tracking module, and information
module respectively. Figure 6 shows the welcome screen as
may be presented on mobile displays such as smartphones.

Login/Sign-Up Module: This module enables all actors to

create an account and access their accounts on the proposed
system.

Coding Module: This module enables codes to be assigned

to suspected cases. Symptoms and health information of
cases are documented by the officers and accounts created
based on identified symptoms, which include high body
temperature, sneezing, and coughing. The code is associated
with the residential address and mobile phone number of the
case.

Tracking Module: This module helps the officers to track the

geographical positions of the cases when the need arises.
The module will map the code assigned earlier to the case.
The tracking functionality works on two ways: mapping the
location of the case based on the phone number provided and
Figure 4: Low-level structure of the system using class against the residential and contact addressed provided. This
diagrams
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may be needed in times of emergency outbreaks in formerly burden it exerts on governments and societies are quite huge.
less-prevalent areas. No government is taking chances and in Africa with known
poor healthcare delivery facilities and systems, there is every
Information Module: The information module provides a tendency that it may take an unexpected toll on the people.
guest with a platform to interact with the system. The guest Having taking into cognizance the damages the pandemic
may request or report some issues and can also obtain could cause, the authors believe that it would be ideal to
relevant information on transmission, distribution, etc. conceptualize and evolve a technological tool that could
assist in managing the challenges presented by this august
visitor. Consequently, the authors proposed, analyzed and
designed an alert and tracking system. Going forward, the
authors conclude that it is possible to implement a system
that could be used to manage cases whether locally or
remotely. The authors believe that paper has identified the
various players that could be affected using the proposed
system and that it is possible to tag and track confirmed
cases and suspected cases alike using the system. However,
the authors note that as this project is a work-in-progress, the
system could be extended using technologies such as IoT
and wearable intelligent computing straps that would enable
the direct transmission of data from the case (patient) to the
remote care management platform to enable remote
management of cases.

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