Based on recent studies, some COVID-19 symptoms can persist for months after infection, leading to what is termed long COVID. Factors such as vaccination timing, patient characteristics, and symptoms during the acute phase of infection may contribute to the prolonged effects and intensity of long COVID. Each patient, based on their unique combination of factors, develops a specific risk or intensity of long COVID. In this work, we aim to achieve two objectives: (1) conduct a statistical analysis to identify relationships between various factors and long COVID, and (2) perform predictive analysis of long COVID intensity using these factors. We benchmark and interpret various data-driven approaches, including linear models, random forests, gradient boosting, and neural networks, using data from the Lifelines COVID-19 cohort. Our results show that Neural Networks (NN) achieve the best performance in terms of MAPE, with predictions averaging 19\% error. Additionally, interpretability analysis reveals key factors such as loss of smell, headache, muscle pain, and vaccination timing as significant predictors, while chronic disease and gender are critical risk factors. These insights provide valuable guidance for understanding long COVID and developing targeted interventions.

This work undertakes studies to evaluate Interpretability Methods for Time-Series Deep Learning. Sensitivity analysis assesses how input changes affect the output, constituting a key component of interpretation. Among the post-hoc interpretation methods such as back-propagation, perturbation, and approximation, my work will investigate perturbation-based sensitivity Analysis methods on modern Transformer models to benchmark their performances. Specifically, my work answers three research questions: 1) Do different sensitivity analysis (SA) methods yield comparable outputs and attribute importance rankings? 2) Using the same sensitivity analysis method, do different Deep Learning (DL) models impact the output of the sensitivity analysis? 3) How well do the results from sensitivity analysis methods align with the ground truth?

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) after it was first discovered in Wuhan, China [1]. Over one year, the virus has infected more than 68 million people worldwide [2]. The virus can be fatal for elderly people or ones with chronic diseases [3]. Different countries across the globe have imposed several social practices and strategies to reduce the spread of the infection and to ensure the well-being of the residents. These practices and strategies include but are not limited to social distancing, restricted and authorized travels, remote work and education, reduced working staff in organizations, and frequent COVID-19 tests. These measures have been proved potential in reducing the disease spread and death in the previous pandemics [3], [4]. Several studies have focused on machine learning time series models to forecast the number of COVID-19 infections in different countries [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. This is to aid the government in designing and regulating efficient virus spread-mitigating strategies and to enable healthcare organizations for effective planning of health personnel and facilities resources. Based on the forecasted infections, the government can either make the confinement laws stricter or can ease them.

Back before he retired, Naval War College professor and contributor to The Atlantic Tom Nichols published a 2017 book called The Death of Expertise. Those who claim their own facts or knowledge without supporting evidence, he noted, have become more and more prominent in online conversation we've been having. And the noisiest and most prone to online pyrotechnics and bomb throwing have been getting the most attention. As a result, the quieter voices from those who know how to build a balanced consensus–using mutually agreed-upon facts–and have expertise in areas that have a direct and immediate impact on society are being drowned out. Here's a recent example of how those with expertise seem to have less clout now than they used to.

To investigate whether a deep learning model can detect Covid-19 from disruptions in the human body's physiological (heart rate) and rest-activity rhythms (rhythmic dysregulation) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We propose CovidRhythm, a novel Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) Network with Multi-Head Self-Attention (MHSA) that combines sensor and rhythmic features extracted from heart rate and activity (steps) data gathered passively using consumer-grade smart wearable to predict Covid-19. A total of 39 features were extracted (standard deviation, mean, min/max/avg length of sedentary and active bouts) from wearable sensor data. Biobehavioral rhythms were modeled using nine parameters (mesor, amplitude, acrophase, and intra-daily variability). These features were then input to CovidRhythm for predicting Covid-19 in the incubation phase (one day before biological symptoms manifest). A combination of sensor and biobehavioral rhythm features achieved the highest AUC-ROC of 0.79 [Sensitivity = 0.69, Specificity=0.89, F$_{0.1}$ = 0.76], outperforming prior approaches in discriminating Covid-positive patients from healthy controls using 24 hours of historical wearable physiological. Rhythmic features were the most predictive of Covid-19 infection when utilized either alone or in conjunction with sensor features. Sensor features predicted healthy subjects best. Circadian rest-activity rhythms that combine 24h activity and sleep information were the most disrupted. CovidRhythm demonstrates that biobehavioral rhythms derived from consumer-grade wearable data can facilitate timely Covid-19 detection. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to detect Covid-19 using deep learning and biobehavioral rhythms features derived from consumer-grade wearable data.

A new machine learning tool aims to help scientists investigate why some people develop long COVID, a series of debilitating, chronic symptoms that last months to years after the initial COVID-19 infection. Developed by a team of researchers from institutions across the country, led by Justin Reese of Berkeley Lab and Peter Robinson of Jackson Lab, the software analyzes entries in electronic health records (EHRs) to find symptoms in common between people who have been diagnosed with long COVID and to define subtypes of the condition. The research, which is described in a new paper in eBioMedicine, also identified strong correlations between different long COVID subtypes and pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. According to Reese, a computer research scientist in Berkeley Lab's Biosciences Area, this research will help improve our understanding of how and why some individuals develop long COVID symptoms and may enable more effective treatments by helping clinicians develop tailored therapies for each group. For example, the best treatment for patients experiencing nausea and abdominal pain might be quite different from a treatment for those suffering from persistent cough and other lung symptoms.

COVID-19 and its latest omicron strains continue to cause infections across the country as well as globally. Serology (blood) and molecular tests are the two most commonly used methods for rapid COVID-19 testing. Because COVID-19 tests use different mechanisms, they vary significantly. Molecular tests measure the presence of viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA while serology tests detect the presence of antibodies triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Currently, there is no existing study on the correlation between serology and molecular tests and which COVID-19 symptoms play a key role in producing a positive test result.

… potential causes of chronic lesions including cerebral and deep-brain … brain cancer, mental health, machine learning, autism, Parkinson’s, …

Wearable activity trackers that monitor changes in skin temperature and heart and breathing rates, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), might be used to pick up COVID-19 infection days before symptoms start, suggests preliminary research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on wearers of the AVA bracelet, a regulated and commercially available fertility tracker that monitors breathing rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, wrist skin temperature and blood flow, as well as sleep quantity and quality. Typical COVID-19 symptoms may take several days after infection before they appear during which time an infected person can unwittingly spread the virus. Attention has started to focus on the potential of activity trackers and smartwatches to detect all stages of COVID-19 infection in the body from incubation to recovery, with the aim of facilitating early isolation and testing of those with the infection. The researchers therefore wanted to see if physiological changes, monitored by an activity tracker, could be used to develop a machine learning algorithm to detect COVID-19 infection before the start of symptoms. Participants (1163 all under the age of 51) were drawn from the GAPP study between March 2020 and April 2021.

Wearable activity trackers that monitor changes in skin temperature and heart and breathing rates, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), might be used to pick up COVID-19 infection days before symptoms start, suggests preliminary research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on wearers of the AVA bracelet, a regulated and commercially available fertility tracker that monitors breathing rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, wrist skin temperature and blood flow, as well as sleep quantity and quality. Typical COVID-19 symptoms may take several days after infection before they appear during which time an infected person can unwittingly spread the virus. Attention has started to focus on the potential of activity trackers and smartwatches to detect all stages of COVID-19 infection in the body from incubation to recovery, with the aim of facilitating early isolation and testing of those with the infection. The researchers therefore wanted to see if physiological changes, monitored by an activity tracker, could be used to develop a machine learning algorithm to detect COVID-19 infection before the start of symptoms.