Prof. Adel Al-Hunayan, Vice President for Health Sciences Center at Kuwait University, announced that academic staff members at HSC, including the Faculty of Public Health, are cooperating with several sectors at the Ministry of Health, in developing and operating an almost immediate early warning and epidemiological investigation system for COVID-19.
Al-Hunayan indicated that Dr. Muhammad Al-Khamis, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Faculty of Public Health, works with the Ministry of Health on this system, which contains several mathematical models and artificial intelligence algorithms, as it early detects the severity of the epidemic and its social spread.
Moreover, Al-Hunayan clarified that this system will assist in guiding decision- making towards controlling and addressing the epidemic, as it works on detecting and analyzing almost immediately the spatiotemporal clusters of infection; in addition to predicting the locations of infection in the areas of Kuwait based on climate characteristics and population composition to control its spread.
Al-Hunayan pointed out that one of the characteristics of this system is to analyze the genetic epidemiological characteristics of the virus, in order to be able to know the severity of its mutation, and origins of its emergence and spread in Kuwait.
Al-Hunayan concluded by saying that HSC academic staff members are working on developing new models for Kuwait, to predict the number of COVID-19 cases of infection, mortality and recovery. The models also predict the State of Kuwait needs during the coming months, in regard to medical equipment and hospital beds to treat the infected.