An Internet of Things Paradigm: Pandemic Management (incl. COVID-19)

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is emerged from Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 and spread quickly to all provinces of China and also across the globe. Therefore, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19, a global pandemic outbreak on March 11, 2020. Regrettably, treatment options and a cellular understanding of SARS-CoV-2 infection are still remaining as a bottleneck. Nevertheless, the old-style public health measures namely isolation, quarantine, social distancing and community containment are playing the pivotal role in managing COVID-19. To reinforce the old-style public health measures, an IoT paradigm is introduced in this research work. The proposed IoT paradigm can 1) examine infected people at transport terminals to reduce spatial spread due to regional travel; 2) ensure social distance and face masks in public places; 3) remote health monitoring of the elderly and those in quarantine; 4) overcome the lack of human resources available to care for a population in crisis. It has been envisioned that the efficient development and implementation of the proposed IoT paradigm at every region can manage the current state of affairs, prevent further outbreaks across geographical regions, resume economic activities and provide adequate emergency infrastructure.