Controlling spread of COVID-19 using VANETs

Abstract

COVID-19 is spreading at an exponential rate and declared as ‘Pandemic’ by the World Health Organization (WHO). The only way of controlling its spread is ‘social distancing’ among the human beings. Apart from human beings, it can also spread through other objects such as metals and plastics which are used in public passenger buses, cars and trains. Studies reveal that the COVID-19 virus can stay on metallic things for 2-5 days. This makes traveling more difficult for regular employees to their workplace. Also, due to increasing number of COVID-19 patients, it is very difficult for a patient to find the required resources at hospitals. In this paper, we propose a VANETIoT framework for detection of COVID-19 exposure in various entities such as vehicles. A vehicle is said to be virus-exposed if it carries any COVID-19 positive patient. We develop an Android application ‘Corona Assistant’ for travelers to find all virusexposed vehicles and chose virus-free vehicle for traveling. In addition, a hospital recommendation system (HRS) is developed inside the ‘Corona Assistant’ application. HRS helps the COVID19 positive patient to select the nearby hospital based on available resources