• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

AI System Can Predict COVID-19 Outbreaks Up To Six Weeks In Advance

January 18, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists in the United States have developed a machine learning algorithm that can predict a surge of COVID-19 cases at county level across the US, in the vast majority of cases. Such a tool could have a powerful impact in protecting people, and let healthcare systems prepare up to six weeks before a major outbreak.

To reach this prediction level, the team fed the machine learning algorithm historical data on COVID-19 activity in 97 US counties, as well as search terms from Google, tweets, technical searches from medical professionals, and directions requested from Apple Maps. The algorithm was able to work out the relevant aspects that flagged the beginning of a surge in cases.

Advertisement

“We try to identify changes in human behavior that may be predictive of changes of transmission patterns in COVID-19,” corresponding author Professor Mauricio Santillana, from Harvard Medical School, told IFLScience. “When we are looking in real-time and we start seeing those patterns that historically have anticipated the emergence of an outbreak, then we can say, ‘okay, looks like an outbreak may happen in the coming one to six weeks’.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already uses approaches to predict the evolution of COVID-19 infections and deaths over time. These are based on epidemiological indicators. The limitation of these models is that they often struggle to capture rapid changes, like during surges, because they do not receive fast, consistent, and reliable data.

“If we want to be responsive in real-time to outbreaks that are about to emerge, we want those models to be very accurate during those times when things change from being normal to a lot of cases,” Santillana explained to IFLScience.

Advertisement

This approach was able to identify 87 percent of the outbreaks in the data collected between January 2020 and January 2022. Compared to the standard CDC approach, the machine learning approach could predict outbreaks within a similar timeframe or up to six weeks in advance. The system has limitations when it comes to small and rural counties with low internet usage, but it is a step forward in predicting rapid changes in COVID-19 infections.

Santillana explained that such an approach could be used to help protect vulnerable people and to better allocate medical resources. In an ideal world, we might end up with a scenario similar to the Y2K scare, where the system’s prediction is taken so seriously by everyone that the problem is solved before it materializes.

The work is published in the journal Science Advances.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Biden and China’s Xi discuss managing competition, avoiding conflict in call
  2. Evergrande bondholders don’t expect coupon payment on Thursday – source
  3. Factors driving hot Canadian inflation still seem temporary, central bank chief says
  4. Oldest Remains Of Planets In Milky Way Discovered, And They’re Nearby

Source Link: AI System Can Predict COVID-19 Outbreaks Up To Six Weeks In Advance

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version