Pakistan develops AI system to measure Covid risk

Recovery of coronavirus patients jumps to 92.31% in the country

Pakistan has made “an indigenously developed, state of the art” system based on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mark and divide areas according to their coronavirus risk rating, announced an aide of the prime minister on Friday.

“The AI experts of Love for Data, assisted the NCOC [National Command and Control Centre] and the Pakistan Army conduct video-based risk detection, to measure Covid-19 risk at shops and cattle markets,” Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan wrote in a series of tweets.

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GOP has been using indigenously dvlpd state of the art AI solutions. AI experts, @love4Data, assisted NCOC and Pk Army conduct video-based risk detection, to measure COVID-19 risk at shops & cattle mrkts.

— Faisal Sultan (@fslsltn) August 14, 2020

Explaining the system, the SAPM said the IA system analyses ten factors like mask adherence, social distancing and gender-detection through video analysis.

2/2 Mask Adherence, Social Distancing, Gender Detection, along with 10 other variables used for area based risk ratings to assist district authorities strengthen their SOP implementation and adopt localized strategy to prevent covid spread.

— Faisal Sultan (@fslsltn) August 14, 2020

“These variables [are] used for area based risk ratings to assist district authorities strengthen their SOP [standard operating procedure] implementation and adopt localized strategy to prevent Covid-19 spread,” he said.

Images shared by Dr Sultan show people keeping the required distance as marked in green boxes, whereas those marked in red boxes were seen to be standing too close to others.

In Pakistan, the rate of recovery of coronavirus patients has jumped to 92.31% as 265,215 people out of the 287,300 people infected by the disease have already recovered, said the latest statistics released by the NCOC on Friday. In the last 24 hours, some 626 people were tested positive for Covid-19 while 14 patients died.

Prime Ministers Imran Khan has time and again credited the decline in cases to the federal government's "smart lockdown" policy –restrictions imposed in coronavirus hotspots. The country recorded a total of 287,300 overall coronavirus cases with 6,153 deaths.

The NCOC holds a meeting every day to take stock of the pandemic. It implements decisions of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) on Coronavirus, a body headed by the prime minister.