TORONTO (PRWEB) December 09, 2020
With the recent uptick of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and in the absence of evidence-informed guidance, provincial and municipal policymakers are faced with the potential of making decisions on putting stricter intervention policies in place, with little evidence to support their choices, and with little consideration as to the potentially serious trade-offs that such policies could introduce. Thus, there is an urgent need for a comprehensive and science-driven assessment of potential public health interventions to address COVID-19 and when to relax them. What is needed is a tool that can measure the tradeoffs involved between the economic and epidemiological impacts of various lockdown strategies to enable governments with the tools to manage the pandemic. In May, the Canadian Government, through its Supercluster initiative, funded a new tool to help officials estimate the effects of social distancing and other public health interventions used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, Riskthinking.AI, along with its partners, have announced the release of COVIDWISDOM™. The tool combines information from epidemiological and economic models to estimate the effects of seven different intervention levels on public health metrics such as cumulative fatalities, peak demand for ICU beds, and economic consequences such as employment and even GDP Per Capita.
The tool is designed to help project the effects of implementing or rolling back non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) policies under specific scenarios.
The easy-to-use tool is available to policymakers and is expected to be updated daily as new data becomes available. Researchers created the tool based on COVID-19 data collected from around the world, evidence from past epidemics, peer-reviewed literature and intervention impact data from the current pandemic, Google mobility data, and widespread surveys of Canadian citizens.
The seven Intervention Levels analyzed by the tool vary in intensity from closing schools and restricting mass gathers to requiring everyone other than essential workers to shelter-at-place.
By selecting a portfolio of strategies, users of the tool can estimate the public health and economic consequences at the provincial and municipal levels of imposing or lifting restrictions. The model will generate estimates for the projected change in coronavirus infections, fatalities, hospital capacity, and gross province income.
“The solution being delivered today will provide Canadian policymakers an evidence-based, scenario-driven tool that will present them with the trade-offs that will help them make decisions to protect their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This tool shows the importance of wearing masks and the risks of non-compliance while helping leaders better appreciate both the economic and public health challenges as they develop recovery roadmaps,” said Ron Dembo, Riskthinking.AI CEO.
“Consortium and technology partners contributing on this project include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Canadian Government, survey data was collected from over 500 citizens across Canada, Mobility Data from Google and dozens of other public and private companies and data providers all worked to deliver COVIDWISDOM™ in an effort to help save lives,” said Andrew Weibe, Risktinking.AI Chief Science Officer.
Public access to COVIDWISDOM™ is available at https://covidwisdom.riskthinking.AI
About Riskthinking.AI
Riskthinking.AI combines machine learning and structured expert judgment with scientific and sensor data in order to algorithmically generate forward-looking scenarios that can accurately and consistently capture extreme possibilities of the impacts of pandemics and risks related to climate change. The company is based in Toronto, Canada.