Implications of the Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variant: Caution is the Key

An Internet-of-Disease System for COVID-19 Testing Using Saliva by an AI-Controlled Microfluidic ELISA Device

Throughout coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks, the centers for disease control and prevention (CDCP) of a country require monitoring of particular territories to provide public health guidance. In this work, the Internet of Diseases (IoD) is suggested for continuous real-time monitoring of infectious diseases for public health. Because converging information and communication technologies (ICTs) with point-of-care (POC) devices to enable the IoD for continuous real-time health monitoring and processing of clinical records are crucial, an IoD platform associating a lab-on-a-chip (LOC) device to diagnose severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) from oropharyngeal saliva samples have been developed and uploaded the resulted diagnostic data into a cloud-based system to be connected with CDCP. Moreover, a choropleth IoD map to visualize provincial infection rate is proposed along with the IoD platform. The developed platform is applied for the quantification of SARS-CoV-2 N-protein antigen with a LOD as low as 0.013 ng mL^-1 and the infection rate of various provinces is projected with the IoD map successfully. Thus, the proposed IoD system has the potential to become an imperative tool for the disease control and prevention centers to restrain COVID-19 outbreaks by identifying the severity of particular regions.