What's the role of science in the fight against COVID-19?
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus
(SARS-CoV-2). It has rapidly become a global pandemic and
is continuing to spread across the globe. Since treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 are
still being researched, different procedures have been used to limit the widespread infections of
the virus while a proper cure is being developed. Countries around the globe are taking measures
to contribute to protecting people. The most effective way to minimize
and prevent the spread of the COVID-19 is to adopt social distancing, quarantine,
frequent hand washing and use of hand sanitizer. Indeed, all of these quality recommendations
are only possible because of the science that came before.
The scientists are currently working together in the fight against the ongoing pandemic,
using their knowledge and resources to provide solutions.
Astronomers, astrophysicists,
physicians and engineers from all over the world are working on it, too.
Do you think it's weird? Well, it is not.
Follow me on this journey to discover what's the role played by them in the fight against
the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on development!
All of us know that engineers, physicians and astronomers are...pretty good at math.
Also, everybody knows that COVID-19 disease affects the respiratory system.
Most of the technologies that we are going to discuss start from these two points:
1) forecasting the future evolution of COVID outbreak by studying mathematical models.
A mathematical model is a description of a system using
mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is
called mathematical modelling. A model may help to explain a system
and to study the effects of different components, and to make predictions about behaviour.
2) Developing modern ventilators.
A ventilator is a machine that provides mechanical ventilation by moving breathable
air into and out of the lungs, to deliver breaths to a patient who is physically unable to breathe,
or breathing insufficiently. Modern ventilators are computerized microprocessor-controlled
machines, but patients can also be ventilated with a simple, hand-operated bag valve mask.
Ventilators are chiefly used in intensive care medicine, home-care, and emergency medicine
(as standalone units) and anesthesiology (as a component of an anaesthesia machine).
So let's get deeper into this: we are going to show you how useful
science could be in the fight of the COVID global pandemic.
SOUTH AFRICA
The South Africa Radio Astronomy Observatory is working in collaboration with other astronomer and
engineer teams at SAAO (South African Astronomy Observatory) and SALT (South African Large
Telescope), scientists and engineers of the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge on the process
to manage the National Ventilators Project for the local design, manufacturing of 10000 ventilators,
and up to 50000 more if necessary. The aim is to help patients get oxygen by pumping air into
their lungs with no need for electricity. This will help to treat the majority of hospitalised
stricken cases in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa. The ventilator project
is based on the experience that the SARAO team has gained in the development and construction
of the 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope, a precursor to the world’s largest radio
telescope SKA (Square Kilometre Array). As you can see, SARAO's team experience
was necessary for developing this new ventilator technology.
CANADA
In Canada, Dr Art McDonald, Professor Emeritus (Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy)
at Queen’s University and 2015 Nobel Laureate are working in collaboration with other Queen’s
physics researchers, to design and manufacture ventilators that provide a controlled supply of
oxygen and air to COVID-19-stricken patients. Where does the idea come from?
The ventilator design will be derived from the collective expertise in the
design of gas-handling and electronic control systems used in the search for dark matter,
which represents more than 80% of the Universe. “This project is an example of how we can harness
the capacity and talent of the Canadian nuclear and particle physics community, and the Canadian
Nuclear Laboratories to help combat COVID-19 with our international partners,” said McDonald.
UNITED STATES
Of course, NASA is using its personnel and technologies to develop some solutions.
A team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible
Locally (VITAL), which could assist patients who require breathing assistance. The ventilator
design is simpler and faster to build than the conventional ventilator and naturally low cost.
Where does this solution come from? Aerosol physics.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center is using their expertise in aerosol physics
to work in collaboration with other companies on a decontamination system called AMBUStat.
This system is used to distribute droplets of a sterilizing fluid that allows for rapid
decontamination of ambulances and other vehicles. Marit Meyer, an engineer at Glenn, said the
pandemic has prompted the development of a new version of the system that can disinfect surfaces
as well as kill pathogens in the air. “Another objective that we had is to keep the cost low so
that they can make the technology available to underserved communities,” she said.
FRANCE
In France, many laboratories have printed visors using 3D printers to help healthcare personnel.
The Laboratory for Space Science and Astrophysical Instrumentation
(LESIA) and the Paris Observatory have also manufactured valves, these are connecting
pieces to transform Decathlon diving masks into a respirator substitute for hospitals. The CNRS
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) expressed a need for specialists in simulations
and most astronomers have responded to this call and are working with epidemiologists
to model simulations of contamination that can predict the appearance of peaks
and help to understand the initial conditions of the pandemic. Another team of astronomers is
working together with Microsoft’s engineers, and epidemiologists by combining different public data
to construct epidemiologic models to predict the evolution of the COVID-19 disease.
TANZANIA
In Tanzania, astronomy students from Meru University of Science and Technology
have developed a solar-powered foot-activated hand washing system
to help reduce the spread of the virus in the country.
We could talk about a very large number of other solutions that scientists found all over
the world, but this video would be too long. And we don't want you to bore you that much...
But we want to show you some other studies that are helping us in the fight against the virus.
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An interesting study has been done by astronomers to forecast the future evolution
of the COVID-19 outbreak. In all countries that they have investigated, they found that the time
evolution of the inverse fractional daily growth rate of new infections appears to be universal
and is accurately characterised by a universal function which is well modelled by the two
Gumbel parameters function (Daddi et al. 2020). This study contributes to predicting the time of
the peak in the daily new infections and the time when the rate of new infections
reaches pre-set low level which can be used to help governments for planning the reopening
of social and economic activities. In the
“Early Gumbel forecasts of the evolution of the COVID-19 outbreaks
and quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of countering measures” article's abstract,
from Emanuele Daddi et Al. We can read: “We discovered that the time evolution of
the inverse fractional daily growth of new infections,
N/∆ N, in the current outbreak of COVID-19, is accurately described by a universal function,
namely the two-parameter Gumbel cumulative function, in all countries that we have
investigated. While the two Gumbel parameters vary from country to country (and even within different
regions of the same country), reflecting the diversity and efficacy of the adopted containment
measures, the functional form of the evolution of ∆ N/N appears to be universal. The result
of the fit in a given region or country appears to be stable against variations of the selected
time interval. This makes it possible to robustly estimate the two parameters from the
data even over relatively small periods. In turn, this allows one to predict with large advance and
well-controlled confidence levels, the time of the peak in the daily new infections, its magnitude
and duration (hence the total infections), as well as the time when the daily new infections decrease
to a pre-set value (e.g. less than about 2 new infections per day per million people),
which can be very useful for planning the reopening of economic and social activities.
We use this formalism to predict and compare these key features
of the evolution of the COVID-19 disease in several countries and provide a quantitative
assessment of the degree of success in their efforts to contain the outbreak. “
Also, an astrophysicist, Vignesh Murugan, and an engineer teamed up to create a proximity
detector device that gives out a warning when two people are closer to each other
than the recommended social distancing length.
Last but not least: In February, a month after
the existence of Sars-Cov-2 was made public, a group of scientists were able to identify
the structure of the virus’ main protease. They accomplished this using X-ray crystallography,
a method first developed by physicists. Physics-based techniques play a huge role in the
field of structural biology. The vast majority of biological macromolecule structures are obtained
by X-ray crystallography, going back to 1934 when John Desmond Bernal and Dorothy Hodgkin
recorded the first X-ray diffraction pattern of a crystallized protein, the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Their work stemmed from that of physicists such as Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays; Max von
Laue, who discovered that X-ray wavelengths are comparable with inter-atomic distances
and are therefore diffracted by crystals; and William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg,
who showed how to use a diffraction pattern to analyse the corresponding
crystal structure. Hodgkin went on to win the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her
determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.
Single biological molecules also diffract X-rays, but only very weakly. Crystallization,
as Bernal and Hodgkin employed for pepsin, is helpful because it results in the repetition
of huge numbers of molecules in an ordered, 3D lattice so that all their tiny signals
reinforce one another and become detectable. Of course, to obtain the signals in the first
place requires X-rays. Nowadays, synchrotron radiation sources – large facilities that
accelerate electrons in a continuous ring – are ideal for macromolecular crystallography
because they produce high-intensity X-rays with a very narrow spread of wavelengths. At these
machines, according to Alexander Wlodawer, chief of the macromolecular crystallography laboratory
at the US National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. , diffraction datasets that would have
taken months with X-rays from traditional rotating anode generators take just seconds to compile.
As you can see, we probably will never have the answers to all of our problems.
But we can try to solve them, with a little help from science.
"This video ends here! Thanks for watching everyone!
Do you feel safe in the hands of science? What would you ask
scientists? Which studies do you think are the most important in the fight against COVID-19?
Let us know in the comments below! See you on the channel!