A COVID-Band for a Safer School Environment

Abstract

The huge impact of COVID-19 on the global healthcare systems has accelerated the search for novel tools to stem the tide. Attention has turned to the digital health community to provide possible solutions that could mitigate the impact of this pandemic. Among all the shifts and changes, the education sector has experienced its own setbacks. Knowing that social distancing and temperature screening were major requirements to re-open schools, it becomes mandatory to monitor the vital signs of the students to effectively identify any high risk. Hence, digital-based solutions can help capture information on possible prospect of contagion to facilitate active COVID-19 surveillance. In this work, we design the COVID-Band, which uses the IoT technology to monitor the safe distance, body temperature and pulse rate of school students. The proposed work provides an efficient digital tool to help accelerate detection, reporting, active surveillance and rapid response for COVID-19 cases at schools.