Treatments Decisions Navigating the Crisis

NAVIGATING THE CRISIS

With so much information on social media and in the news, navigating the COVID-19 crisis can be difficult, confusing and scary. The top concerns are how this pandemic will play out, and whether governments and health infrastructure will cope. By prioritizing cooperation and information sharing, both internally among researchers as well as externally with other stakeholders across government and civil society, KAUST’s Rapid Research Response Team is working to answer these questions while providing actionable information for the general public and policymakers alike.

COVID COMPASS: Making sense of the pandemic from the so-called infodemic – the deluge of information out there on COVID-19 in scientific research papers – is difficult for the scientific community. For the general public and policymakers, who face a barrage of information in the form of daily news articles and millions of social media posts, not to mention conspiracy theories, the task is even harder. To this end, KAUST researchers and other stakeholders launched the COVID Compass Taskforce. Led by Professor Carlos Duarte, the taskforce consists of 26 KAUST scientists alongside journalists, economists and public policy experts, and is committed to quickly publishing relevant and actionable data on the COVID-19 pandemic. This data comes from 20 different verified sources, is analyzed using computational models and then made available through the taskforce’s real-time dashboard.

COVID Compass brings the most critical information on the pandemic together in one place. Behind the scenes, KAUST data scientists are running complex artificial intelligence-powered analysis and computational modeling to project the virus’ evolution. The output displayed on the dashboard is digestible and easy to understand though providing information on four key areas: COVID-19’s spread, the socio-economic cost, the impact on health care infrastructure and the effectiveness of government responses to the virus. Ultimately, the researchers behind COVID Compass want to use data to help answer pressing pandemic-related questions about personal safety, the risk to families, and the urgency of the threat to specific regions and countries.

ENDGAME: With projections of infection numbers constantly changing and timelines on vaccines and treatments still unclear, how long the global COVID-19 pandemic will last is uncertain. In some countries, the disease continues to spread at an exponential rate, while in others the curve of new reported cases is flattening. However, under-reported cases and the threat of a second wave of outbreaks means there is still some way to go before societies can fully return to normal.

Professor David Ketcheson is putting mathematical modeling to work to understand how transmission might play out. Like water molecules in a wave, the molecules in Professor Ketcheson’s COVID-19 model are people, either infected, susceptible or recovering. Using two parameters – the time it takes for virus infections to double (3-4 days) and the number of people an infected person passes the virus onto (on average 3 people) – Professor Ketcheson’s model has been successful in predicting the virus’ spread.

CARLOS DUARTE Professor of Marine Science and Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology

COVID COMPASS BRIDGES THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE WAY DATA IS PRESENTED AND THE NEEDS OF THE PUBLIC AND POLICYMAKERS.

IMPACT

Knowledge is power, and researchers at KAUST are working hard to answer some of the most pressing questions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The output from their statistical models have significant implications for both localized and global efforts to combat the virus. Professor Ketcheson’s work is crucial to helping governments predict the spread of the virus, and complements Professor Umbao’s work on predicting resource allocation needs that can help officials better prepare health facilities ahead of a rise in cases. Communicating these outputs in a digestible form is key. Free to access and distribute, reliable, constantly updated and forward looking, the COVID Compass developed by Professor Duarte’s team is helping governments and citizens navigate the pandemic and make informed decisions.

DAVID KETCHESON Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science

HAVING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE PANDEMIC, EVEN IF THE FUTURE IS FRIGHTENING, IS POWERFUL AND REASSURING.

HERNANDO OMBAO Professor of Statistics and head of the Biostatistics Group

PREDICTING NEEDS

Hospitals on the verge of running out of ventilators, nurses and doctors without adequate personal protective equipment, intensive care wards at capacity – these are common global news headlines during COVID-19. The speed at which the virus has spread and the number of people it has killed caught many governments off guard. Health care infrastructure in some countries such as Spain, Italy and the US have already been overrun. For other countries, though, it is not too late. Professor Hernando Ombao and his team in the Biostatistics Group are developing statistical models to predict patient admissions and hospitalization rates. They are working with daily infection data from the KAUST campus to predict the number of admissions at the local campus clinic and forecast the length of hospitalizations. This information is vital to preparing the hospitals on campus in case a nationwide spike in cases takes place. As Professor Ombao explains, “If we operate under the assumption that Jeddah hospitals are at full capacity and at some point the KAUST clinic will have to take care of local residents, then our model can help forecast if we’ll have enough beds.”

SUPPORTING HOSPITALS & HEALTH WORKERS

Disruptions to global supply chains and a surge in demand for gloves, masks, face shields and gowns, among other medical equipment, has led to shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other devices like ventilators in many hospitals around the world. This has left doctors, nurses and other frontline health workers dangerously ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients and avoid infection themselves. Some health facilities have had to temporarily close due to PPE shortages. Early in the crisis, the Saudi Arabian government blocked all exports of medical devices and local factories started producing face masks. As of May 2020 local factories were producing 3.7 million face masks per week to protect residents and health workers alike. Working with government partners and private sector stakeholders, researchers at KAUST are contributing to the national effort through the design and production of PPE and medical devices.

PROTECTING FRONTLINE WORKERS: Face shields that comprise a transparent plastic barrier that covers most of the face have been touted by some health officials as a better disease-fighting tool than simple cloth masks. Previous studies have shown that they can potentially reduce a person’s viral exposure to a cough by 96%. Unlike many cloth masks, they can also be cleaned and reused repeatedly, and are thus proving vital amid PPE shortages. They are already being mass produced by Nike, Apple, Ford, Harvard University and tech companies in Egypt. Researchers at KAUST’s Core Labs, in collaboration with British automotive company McLaren and Saudi investment conglomerate Olayan Group, have designed and produced face shields for use by local frontline hospital staff. Prototypes have been sent to the National Guard Hospital for testing and, once vetted, KAUST will share the designs with the country’s industrial sector so that they can be mass produced.

LIFESAVING SUPPORT: Ventilators are vital to keeping COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory symptoms alive. Critical shortages of the devices have come to symbolize a lack of preparedness for pandemics. Engineers across the world have stepped up to the plate in designing and manufacturing simple, cheap, yet effective ventilator devices.

At KAUST, researchers have crafted a mechanism to automate already existing manual Ambu bags to increase health service delivery efficiency. Ambu bags are manual resuscitator devices or ‘self-inflating bags’ that are used globally to provide positive pressure ventilation to patients who are not breathing or not breathing adequately. These bags require that the medical professional continually inflates the bag in a regular rhythm to assist the patient with breathing. KAUST researchers designed and created a mechanical actuator for Ambu bags, which automatically inflates the bag. This allows medical professionals to treat other patients and not be tied to one individual.

JUSTIN MYNAR Executive Director at KAUST Core Labs

IN MARCH, KAUST JOINED THE GLOBAL EFFORT TO PROVIDE FAST AND EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS TO ASSIST THOSE ON THE FRONT LINE OF MEDICAL CARE.

IMPACT

KAUST researchers are leading the local design of affordable but effective personal protective equipment and medical devices that can be rapidly produced and deployed. These designs are easy to replicate for manufacturers, require minimal parts that can be sourced locally, and are easy to deploy and use at the point of care. The KAUST-produced mechanical actuator, for instance, can be easily connected to Ambu bags, which are readily available in most medical facilities and are internationally standardized in terms of both size and performance.

OLAYAN GROUP

“We had to do something when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and ensuring adequate supplies of PPE was one of the main challenges. When we looked for a technical partner with whom to collaborate, what better choice was there than KAUST? The speed at which KAUST was able to pivot and gear up to deliver an innovative, reliable and cost-effective face protector and design a fit-to-purpose ventilator was world class, proving yet again that KAUST is well positioned to fulfill its vision in Saudi Arabia and globally.”