Testing the identification effectiveness of an unknown outbreak of the Infectious Diseases Seeker (IDS) using and comparing the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak with the past SARS and MERS epidemics

• Published in: Journal of infection and public health 2021-01, Vol.14 (1), p.123-130
• Main Authors: Baldassi, Federico, Cenciarelli, Orlando, Malizia, Andrea, Gaudio, Pasquale
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology; Coronavirus Infections - virology; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; COVID-19 - virology; Databases, Factual; Disease Outbreaks; Epidemiology; Global Health; Humans; Infectious Diseases Seeker (IDS); Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus; Novel coronavirus; Population Surveillance; SARS Virus; SARS-CoV-2
• ISSN: 1876-0341; 1876-035X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jiph.2020.11.014

The aim of this research is to assess the predictive accuracy of the Infectious Diseases Seeker (IDS) – an innovative tool for prompt identification of the causative agent of infectious diseases during outbreaks – when field epidemiological data collected from a novel outbreak of unknown origin are analysed by the tool. For this reason, it has been taken into account the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, which began in China at the end of December 2019, has rapidly spread around the globe, and it has led to a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), declared to the 30th of January 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The IDS takes advantage of an off-line database, built before the COVID-19 pandemic, which represents a pivotal characteristic for working without an internet connection. The software has been tested using the epidemiological data available in different and progressive stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a comparison, the results of the tests performed using the epidemiological data from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) epidemic in 2002 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) epidemic in 2012, are shown. The overall outcomes provided by the software are comforting, as a matter of the fact that IDS has identified with a good accuracy the SARS and MERS epidemics (over 90%), while, as expected, it has not provided erroneous and equivocal readings after the elaboration COVID-19 epidemic data. Even though IDS has not recognized the COVID-19 epidemic, it has not given to the end user a false result and wrong interpretation, as expected by the developers. For this reason, IDS reveals itself as useful software to identify a possible epidemic or outbreak. Thus, the intention of developers is to plan, once the software will be released, dedicated updates and upgrades of the database (e.g., SARS-CoV-2) in order to keep this tool increasingly useful and applicable to reality.