Pakistan introduces AI system to determine COVID-19 risk

ISLAMABAD: 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 COVID-19 risk rating.

 Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr. Faisal Sultan in a series of tweets said, “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,”

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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.

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

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

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.

As many as 626 more people tested positive for the novel COVID-19 in the past 24 hours across the country, taking the number of confirmed cases to 287,300.

According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 14 people died due to COVID-19-related complications during this period, pushing the death toll from the disease in the country to 6,153.

As per NCOC, the number of active COVID-19 cases has dropped to 15,932 as 265,215 patients have recovered across the country.

As many as 15,932 more samples were tested over the previous 24 hours, taking the total number of tests conducted across the country thus far to more than 2.2 million.

A total of 1,333 Covid-19 patients are under treatment in various hospitals across the country, 144 of whom are struggling for their lives on ventilators.