essay about covid 19 using modals

Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

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For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

• The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
• The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
• The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
• Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

• Are my experiences different from others’?
• Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
• Am I aware of my privilege?
• Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
• Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

• Grading scales and policies
• Graduation requirements
• Instructional methods
• Schedules and course offerings
• Testing requirements
• Your academic calendar
• Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

• One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
• One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
• Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23  op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22  essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22  op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly,  based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19.  Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21  wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many -- a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them -- and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic -- and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

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Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

• The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

• A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

• Vox is starting a book club. Come read with us!

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Apr 30, 2024

COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, is a global pandemic that has affected people all around the world. It first emerged in a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and quickly spread to countries around the world. This virus was reportedly caused by SARS-CoV-2. Since then, it has spread rapidly to many countries, causing widespread illness and impacting our lives in numerous ways. This blog talks about the details of this virus and also drafts an essay on COVID-19 in 100, 200 and 300 words for students and professionals. 

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words
• 2 Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words
• 3 Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words
• 4 Short Essay on Covid-19

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a global pandemic. It started in late 2019 and has affected people all around the world. The virus spreads very quickly through someone’s sneeze and respiratory issues.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives, with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and changes in daily routines. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash our hands frequently. 

People should follow social distancing and other safety guidelines and also learn the tricks to be safe stay healthy and work the whole challenging time. 

Also Read: National Safe Motherhood Day 2023

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

COVID-19 also known as coronavirus, became a global health crisis in early 2020 and impacted mankind around the world. This virus is said to have originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019. It belongs to the coronavirus family and causes flu-like symptoms. It impacted the healthcare systems, economies and the daily lives of people all over the world. 

The most crucial aspect of COVID-19 is its highly spreadable nature. It is a communicable disease that spreads through various means such as coughs from infected persons, sneezes and communication. Due to its easy transmission leading to its outbreaks, there were many measures taken by the government from all over the world such as Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and wearing masks. 

There are many changes throughout the economic systems, and also in daily routines. Other measures such as schools opting for Online schooling, Remote work options available and restrictions on travel throughout the country and internationally. Subsequently, to cure and top its outbreak, the government started its vaccine campaigns, and other preventive measures. 

In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness. 

Also Read : Essay on My Best Friend

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide. It was first discovered in late 2019 in Cina and then got spread in the whole world. It had a major impact on people’s life, their school, work and daily lives. 

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced and through sneezes, and coughs of an infected person. It can spread to thousands of people because of its highly contagious nature. To cure the widespread of this virus, there are thousands of steps taken by the people and the government. 

Wearing masks is one of the essential precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Social distancing is another vital practice, which involves maintaining a safe distance from others to minimize close contact.

Very frequent handwashing is also very important to stop the spread of this virus. Proper hand hygiene can help remove any potential virus particles from our hands, reducing the risk of infection. 

In conclusion, the Coronavirus has changed people’s perspective on living. It has also changed people’s way of interacting and how to live. To deal with this virus, it is very important to follow the important guidelines such as masks, social distancing and techniques to wash your hands. Getting vaccinated is also very important to go back to normal life and cure this virus completely.

Also Read: Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words

Short Essay on Covid-19

Please find below a sample of a short essay on Covid-19 for school students:

Also Read: Essay on Women’s Day in 200 and 500 words

to write an essay on COVID-19, understand your word limit and make sure to cover all the stages and symptoms of this disease. You need to highlight all the challenges and impacts of COVID-19. Do not forget to conclude your essay with positive precautionary measures.

Writing an essay on COVID-19 in 200 words requires you to cover all the challenges, impacts and precautions of this disease. You don’t need to describe all of these factors in brief, but make sure to add as many options as your word limit allows.

The full form for COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease of 2019.

Related Reads

Hence, we hope that this blog has assisted you in comprehending with an essay on COVID-19. For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Simran Popli

An avid writer and a creative person. With an experience of 1.5 years content writing, Simran has worked with different areas. From medical to working in a marketing agency with different clients to Ed-tech company, the journey has been diverse. Creative, vivacious and patient are the words that describe her personality.

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Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest.

Field study students share their thoughts 

Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year. During our final quarter of the year together, during which we met weekly for two hours via Zoom, we discussed their reactions as the world fell apart around them. First came the pandemic and social distancing, then came the death of George Floyd and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which were imprinted on the lives of these students. This year was anything but dull, instead full of raw emotion and painful realizations of the fragility of the human condition and the extent to which we need one another. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for our students to chronicle their experiences — the good and the bad, the lessons learned, and ways in which they were forever changed by the events of the past four months. I invited all of my students to write an essay describing the ways in which these times had impacted their learning and their lives during or after their time at UCI. These are their voices. — Jessica Borelli , associate professor of psychological science

Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

The current state of affairs put the world on pause, but this pause gave me time to reflect on troubling matters. Time that so many others like me probably also desperately needed to heal without even knowing it. Sometimes it takes one’s world falling apart for the most beautiful mosaic to be built up from the broken pieces of wreckage. 

As the school year was coming to a close and summer was edging around the corner, I began reflecting on how people will spend their summer breaks if the country remains in its current state throughout the sunny season. Aside from living in the sunny beach state of California where people love their vitamin D and social festivities, I think some of the most damaging effects Covid-19 will have on us all has more to do with social distancing policies than with any inconveniences we now face due to the added precautions, despite how devastating it may feel that Disneyland is closed to all the local annual passholders or that the beaches may not be filled with sun-kissed California girls this summer. During this unprecedented time, I don’t think we should allow the rare opportunity we now have to be able to watch in real time how the effects of social distancing can impact our mental health. Before the pandemic, many of us were already engaging in a form of social distancing. Perhaps not the exact same way we are now practicing, but the technology that we have developed over recent years has led to a dramatic decline in our social contact and skills in general. 

The debate over whether we should remain quarantined during this time is not an argument I am trying to pursue. Instead, I am trying to encourage us to view this event as a unique time to study how social distancing can affect people’s mental health over a long period of time and with dramatic results due to the magnitude of the current issue. Although Covid-19 is new and unfamiliar to everyone, the isolation and separation we now face is not. For many, this type of behavior has already been a lifestyle choice for a long time. However, the current situation we all now face has allowed us to gain a more personal insight on how that experience feels due to the current circumstances. Mental illness continues to remain a prevalent problem throughout the world and for that reason could be considered a pandemic of a sort in and of itself long before the Covid-19 outbreak. 

One parallel that can be made between our current restrictions and mental illness reminds me in particular of hikikomori culture. Hikikomori is a phenomenon that originated in Japan but that has since spread internationally, now prevalent in many parts of the world, including the United States. Hikikomori is not a mental disorder but rather can appear as a symptom of a disorder. People engaging in hikikomori remain confined in their houses and often their rooms for an extended period of time, often over the course of many years. This action of voluntary confinement is an extreme form of withdrawal from society and self-isolation. Hikikomori affects a large percent of people in Japan yearly and the problem continues to become more widespread with increasing occurrences being reported around the world each year. While we know this problem has continued to increase, the exact number of people practicing hikikomori is unknown because there is a large amount of stigma surrounding the phenomenon that inhibits people from seeking help. This phenomenon cannot be written off as culturally defined because it is spreading to many parts of the world. With the technology we now have, and mental health issues on the rise and expected to increase even more so after feeling the effects of the current pandemic, I think we will definitely see a rise in the number of people engaging in this social isolation, especially with the increase in legitimate fears we now face that appear to justify the previously considered irrational fears many have associated with social gatherings. We now have the perfect sample of people to provide answers about how this form of isolation can affect people over time. 

Likewise, with the advancements we have made to technology not only is it now possible to survive without ever leaving the confines of your own home, but it also makes it possible for us to “fulfill” many of our social interaction needs. It’s very unfortunate, but in addition to the success we have gained through our advancements we have also experienced a great loss. With new technology, I am afraid that we no longer engage with others the way we once did. Although some may say the advancements are for the best, I wonder, at what cost? It is now commonplace to see a phone on the table during a business meeting or first date. Even worse is how many will feel inclined to check their phone during important or meaningful interactions they are having with people face to face. While our technology has become smarter, we have become dumber when it comes to social etiquette. As we all now constantly carry a mini computer with us everywhere we go, we have in essence replaced our best friends. We push others away subconsciously as we reach for our phones during conversations. We no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all saved in our phones. We find comfort in looking down at our phones during those moments of free time we have in public places before our meetings begin. These same moments were once the perfect time to make friends, filled with interactive banter. We now prefer to stare at other people on our phones for hours on end, and often live a sedentary lifestyle instead of going out and interacting with others ourselves. 

These are just a few among many issues the advances to technology led to long ago. We have forgotten how to practice proper tech-etiquette and we have been inadvertently practicing social distancing long before it was ever required. Now is a perfect time for us to look at the society we have become and how we incurred a different kind of pandemic long before the one we currently face. With time, as the social distancing regulations begin to lift, people may possibly begin to appreciate life and connecting with others more than they did before as a result of the unique experience we have shared in together while apart.

Maybe the world needed a time-out to remember how to appreciate what it had but forgot to experience. Life is to be lived through experience, not to be used as a pastime to observe and compare oneself with others. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: never forget to take care and love more because in a world where life is often unpredictable and ever changing, one cannot risk taking time or loved ones for granted. With that, I bid you farewell, fellow comrades, like all else, this too shall pass, now go live your best life!

Privilege in a Pandemic 

Covid-19 has impacted millions of Americans who have been out of work for weeks, thus creating a financial burden. Without a job and the certainty of knowing when one will return to work, paying rent and utilities has been a problem for many. With unemployment on the rise, relying on unemployment benefits has become a necessity for millions of people. According to the Washington Post , unemployment rose to 14.7% in April which is considered to be the worst since the Great Depression. 

Those who are not worried about the financial aspect or the thought never crossed their minds have privilege. Merriam Webster defines privilege as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.” Privilege can have a negative connotation. What you choose to do with your privilege is what matters. Talking about privilege can bring discomfort, but the discomfort it brings can also carry the benefit of drawing awareness to one’s privilege, which can lead the person to take steps to help others. 

I am a first-generation college student who recently transferred to a four-year university. When schools began to close, and students had to leave their on-campus housing, many lost their jobs.I was able to stay on campus because I live in an apartment. I am fortunate to still have a job, although the hours are minimal. My parents help pay for school expenses, including housing, tuition, and food. I do not have to worry about paying rent or how to pay for food because my parents are financially stable to help me. However, there are millions of college students who are not financially stable or do not have the support system I have. Here, I have the privilege and, thus, I am the one who can offer help to others. I may not have millions in funding, but volunteering for centers who need help is where I am able to help. Those who live in California can volunteer through Californians For All  or at food banks, shelter facilities, making calls to seniors, etc. 

I was not aware of my privilege during these times until I started reading more articles about how millions of people cannot afford to pay their rent, and landlords are starting to send notices of violations. Rather than feel guilty and be passive about it, I chose to put my privilege into a sense of purpose: Donating to nonprofits helping those affected by COVID-19, continuing to support local businesses, and supporting businesses who are donating profits to those affected by COVID-19.

My World is Burning 

As I write this, my friends are double checking our medical supplies and making plans to buy water and snacks to pass out at the next protest we are attending. We write down the number for the local bailout fund on our arms and pray that we’re lucky enough not to have to use it should things get ugly. We are part of a pivotal event, the kind of movement that will forever have a place in history. Yet, during this revolution, I have papers to write and grades to worry about, as I’m in the midst of finals. 

My professors have offered empty platitudes. They condemn the violence and acknowledge the stress and pain that so many of us are feeling, especially the additional weight that this carries for students of color. I appreciate their show of solidarity, but it feels meaningless when it is accompanied by requests to complete research reports and finalize presentations. Our world is on fire. Literally. On my social media feeds, I scroll through image after image of burning buildings and police cars in flames. How can I be asked to focus on school when my community is under siege? When police are continuing to murder black people, adding additional names to the ever growing list of their victims. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. David Mcatee. And, now, Rayshard Brooks. 

It already felt like the world was being asked of us when the pandemic started and classes continued. High academic expectations were maintained even when students now faced the challenges of being locked down, often trapped in small spaces with family or roommates. Now we are faced with another public health crisis in the form of police violence and once again it seems like educational faculty are turning a blind eye to the impact that this has on the students. I cannot study for exams when I am busy brushing up on my basic first-aid training, taking notes on the best techniques to stop heavy bleeding and treat chemical burns because at the end of the day, if these protests turn south, I will be entering a warzone. Even when things remain peaceful, there is an ugliness that bubbles just below the surface. When beginning the trek home, I have had armed members of the National Guard follow me and my friends. While kneeling in silence, I have watched police officers cock their weapons and laugh, pointing out targets in the crowd. I have been emailing my professors asking for extensions, trying to explain that if something is turned in late, it could be the result of me being detained or injured. I don’t want to be penalized for trying to do what I wholeheartedly believe is right. 

I have spent my life studying and will continue to study these institutions that have been so instrumental in the oppression and marginalization of black and indigenous communities. Yet, now that I have the opportunity to be on the frontlines actively fighting for the change our country so desperately needs, I feel that this study is more of a hindrance than a help to the cause. Writing papers and reading books can only take me so far and I implore that professors everywhere recognize that requesting their students split their time and energy between finals and justice is an impossible ask.

Opportunity to Serve

Since the start of the most drastic change of our lives, I have had the privilege of helping feed more than 200 different families in the Santa Ana area and even some neighboring cities. It has been an immense pleasure seeing the sheer joy and happiness of families as they come to pick up their box of food from our site, as well as a $50 gift card to Northgate, a grocery store in Santa Ana. Along with donating food and helping feed families, the team at the office, including myself, have dedicated this time to offering psychosocial and mental health check-ups for the families we serve. 

Every day I go into the office I start my day by gathering files of our families we served between the months of January, February, and March and calling them to check on how they are doing financially, mentally, and how they have been affected by COVID-19. As a side project, I have been putting together Excel spreadsheets of all these families’ struggles and finding a way to turn their situation into a success story to share with our board at PY-OCBF and to the community partners who make all of our efforts possible. One of the things that has really touched me while working with these families is how much of an impact this nonprofit organization truly has on family’s lives. I have spoken with many families who I just call to check up on and it turns into an hour call sharing about how much of a change they have seen in their child who went through our program. Further, they go on to discuss that because of our program, their children have a different perspective on the drugs they were using before and the group of friends they were hanging out with. Of course, the situation is different right now as everyone is being told to stay at home; however, there are those handful of kids who still go out without asking for permission, increasing the likelihood they might contract this disease and pass it to the rest of the family. We are working diligently to provide support for these parents and offering advice to talk to their kids in order to have a serious conversation with their kids so that they feel heard and validated. 

Although the novel Coronavirus has impacted the lives of millions of people not just on a national level, but on a global level, I feel that in my current position, it has opened doors for me that would have otherwise not presented themselves. Fortunately, I have been offered a full-time position at the Project Youth Orange County Bar Foundation post-graduation that I have committed to already. This invitation came to me because the organization received a huge grant for COVID-19 relief to offer to their staff and since I was already part-time, they thought I would be a good fit to join the team once mid-June comes around. I was very excited and pleased to be recognized for the work I have done at the office in front of all staff. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I will work even harder to provide for the community and to continue changing the lives of adolescents, who have steered off the path of success. I will use my time as a full-time employee to polish my resume, not forgetting that the main purpose of my moving to Irvine was to become a scholar and continue the education that my parents couldn’t attain. I will still be looking for ways to get internships with other fields within criminology. One specific interest that I have had since being an intern and a part-time employee in this organization is the work of the Orange County Coroner’s Office. I don’t exactly know what enticed me to find it appealing as many would say that it is an awful job in nature since it relates to death and seeing people in their worst state possible. However, I feel that the only way for me to truly know if I want to pursue such a career in forensic science will be to just dive into it and see where it takes me. 

I can, without a doubt, say that the Coronavirus has impacted me in a way unlike many others, and for that I am extremely grateful. As I continue working, I can also state that many people are becoming more and more hopeful as time progresses. With people now beginning to say Stage Two of this stay-at-home order is about to allow retailers and other companies to begin doing curbside delivery, many families can now see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s Do Better

This time of the year is meant to be a time of celebration; however, it has been difficult to feel proud or excited for many of us when it has become a time of collective mourning and sorrow, especially for the Black community. There has been an endless amount of pain, rage, and helplessness that has been felt throughout our nation because of the growing list of Black lives we have lost to violence and brutality.

To honor the lives that we have lost, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Trayon Martin, and all of the other Black lives that have been taken away, may they Rest in Power.

Throughout my college experience, I have become more exposed to the various identities and the upbringings of others, which led to my own self-reflection on my own privileged and marginalized identities. I identify as Colombian, German, and Mexican; however navigating life as a mixed race, I have never been able to identify or have one culture more salient than the other. I am visibly white-passing and do not hold any strong ties with any of my ethnic identities, which used to bring me feelings of guilt and frustration, for I would question whether or not I could be an advocate for certain communities, and whether or not I could claim the identity of a woman of color. In the process of understanding my positionality, I began to wonder what space I belonged in, where I could speak up, and where I should take a step back for others to speak. I found myself in a constant theme of questioning what is my narrative and slowly began to realize that I could not base it off lone identities and that I have had the privilege to move through life without my identities defining who I am. Those initial feelings of guilt and confusion transformed into growth, acceptance, and empowerment.

This journey has driven me to educate myself more about the social inequalities and injustices that people face and to focus on what I can do for those around me. It has motivated me to be more culturally responsive and competent, so that I am able to best advocate for those around me. Through the various roles I have worked in, I have been able to listen to a variety of communities’ narratives and experiences, which has allowed me to extend my empathy to these communities while also pushing me to continue educating myself on how I can best serve and empower them. By immersing myself amongst different communities, I have been given the honor of hearing others’ stories and experiences, which has inspired me to commit myself to support and empower others.

I share my story of navigating through my privileged and marginalized identities in hopes that it encourages others to explore their own identities. This journey is not an easy one, and it is an ongoing learning process that will come with various mistakes. I have learned that with facing our privileges comes feelings of guilt, discomfort, and at times, complacency. It is very easy to become ignorant when we are not affected by different issues, but I challenge those who read this to embrace the discomfort. With these emotions, I have found it important to reflect on the source of discomfort and guilt, for although they are a part of the process, in taking the steps to become more aware of the systemic inequalities around us, understanding the source of discomfort can better inform us on how we perpetuate these systemic inequalities. If we choose to embrace ignorance, we refuse to acknowledge the systems that impact marginalized communities and refuse to honestly and openly hear cries for help. If we choose our own comfort over the lives of those being affected every day, we can never truly honor, serve, or support these communities.

I challenge any non-Black person, including myself, to stop remaining complacent when injustices are committed. We need to consistently recognize and acknowledge how the Black community is disproportionately affected in every injustice experienced and call out anti-Blackness in every role, community, and space we share. We need to keep ourselves and others accountable when we make mistakes or fall back into patterns of complacency or ignorance. We need to continue educating ourselves instead of relying on the emotional labor of the Black community to continuously educate us on the history of their oppressions. We need to collectively uplift and empower one another to heal and rise against injustice. We need to remember that allyship ends when action ends.

To the Black community, you are strong. You deserve to be here. The recent events are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, and the need for rest to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional well-being are at an all time high. If you are able, take the time to regain your energy, feel every emotion, and remind yourself of the power you have inside of you. You are not alone.

The Virus That Makes You Forget

Following Jan. 1 of 2020 many of my classmates and I continued to like, share, and forward the same meme. The meme included any image but held the same phrase: I can see 2020. For many of us, 2020 was a beacon of hope. For the Class of 2020, this meant walking on stage in front of our families. Graduation meant becoming an adult, finding a job, or going to graduate school. No matter what we were doing in our post-grad life, we were the new rising stars ready to take on the world with a positive outlook no matter what the future held. We felt that we had a deal with the universe that we were about to be noticed for our hard work, our hardships, and our perseverance.

Then March 17 of 2020 came to pass with California Gov. Newman ordering us to stay at home, which we all did. However, little did we all know that the world we once had open to us would only be forgotten when we closed our front doors.

Life became immediately uncertain and for many of us, that meant graduation and our post-graduation plans including housing, careers, education, food, and basic standards of living were revoked! We became the forgotten — a place from which many of us had attempted to rise by attending university. The goals that we were told we could set and the plans that we were allowed to make — these were crushed before our eyes.

Eighty days before graduation, in the first several weeks of quarantine, I fell extremely ill; both unfortunately and luckily, I was isolated. All of my roommates had moved out of the student apartments leaving me with limited resources, unable to go to the stores to pick up medicine or food, and with insufficient health coverage to afford a doctor until my throat was too swollen to drink water. For nearly three weeks, I was stuck in bed, I was unable to apply to job deadlines, reach out to family, and have contact with the outside world. I was forgotten.

Forty-five days before graduation, I had clawed my way out of illness and was catching up on an honors thesis about media depictions of sexual exploitation within the American political system, when I was relayed the news that democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. However, when reporting this news to close friends who had been devastated and upset by similar claims against past politicians, they all were too tired and numb from the quarantine to care. Just as I had written hours before reading the initial story, history was repeating, and it was not only I who COVID-19 had forgotten, but now survivors of violence.

After this revelation, I realize the silencing factor that COVID-19 has. Not only does it have the power to terminate the voices of our older generations, but it has the power to silence and make us forget the voices of every generation. Maybe this is why social media usage has gone up, why we see people creating new social media accounts, posting more, attempting to reach out to long lost friends. We do not want to be silenced, moreover, we cannot be silenced. Silence means that we have been forgotten and being forgotten is where injustice and uncertainty occurs. By using social media, pressing like on a post, or even sending a hate message, means that someone cares and is watching what you are doing. If there is no interaction, I am stuck in the land of indifference.

This is a place that I, and many others, now reside, captured and uncertain. In 2020, my plan was to graduate Cum Laude, dean's honor list, with three honors programs, three majors, and with research and job experience that stretched over six years. I would then go into my first year of graduate school, attempting a dual Juris Doctorate. I would be spending my time experimenting with new concepts, new experiences, and new relationships. My life would then be spent giving a microphone to survivors of domestic violence and sex crimes. However, now the plan is wiped clean, instead I sit still bound to graduate in 30 days with no home to stay, no place to work, and no future education to come back to. I would say I am overly qualified, but pandemic makes me lost in a series of names and masked faces.

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

When I read the campuswide email notifying students of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, I was sitting on my couch practicing a research presentation I was going to give a few hours later. For a few minutes, I sat there motionless, trying to digest the meaning of the words as though they were from a language other than my own, familiar sounds strung together in way that was wholly unintelligible to me. I tried but failed to make sense of how this could affect my life. After the initial shock had worn off, I mobilized quickly, snapping into an autopilot mode of being I knew all too well. I began making mental checklists, sharing the email with my friends and family, half of my brain wondering if I should make a trip to the grocery store to stockpile supplies and the other half wondering how I was supposed take final exams in the midst of so much uncertainty. The most chilling realization was knowing I had to wait powerlessly as the fate of the world unfolded, frozen with anxiety as I figured out my place in it all.

These feelings of powerlessness and isolation are familiar bedfellows for me. Early October of 2015, shortly after beginning my first year at UCI, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite having had years of psychological treatment for my condition, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, the flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmares still emerge unwarranted. People have referred to the pandemic as a collective trauma. For me, the pandemic has not only been a collective trauma, it has also been the reemergence of a personal trauma. The news of the pandemic and the implications it has for daily life triggered a reemergence of symptoms that were ultimately ignited by the overwhelming sense of helplessness that lies in waiting, as I suddenly find myself navigating yet another situation beyond my control. Food security, safety, and my sense of self have all been shaken by COVID-19.

The first few weeks after UCI transitioned into remote learning and the governor issued the stay-at-home order, I hardly got any sleep. My body was cycling through hypervigilance and derealization, and my sleep was interrupted by intrusive nightmares oscillating between flashbacks and frightening snippets from current events. Any coping methods I had developed through hard-won efforts over the past few years — leaving my apartment for a change of scenery, hanging out with friends, going to the gym — were suddenly made inaccessible to me due to the stay-at-home orders, closures of non-essential businesses, and many of my friends breaking their campus leases to move back to their family homes. So for me, learning to cope during COVID-19 quarantine means learning to function with my re-emerging PTSD symptoms and without my go-to tools. I must navigate my illness in a rapidly evolving world, one where some of my internalized fears, such as running out of food and living in an unsafe world, are made progressively more external by the minute and broadcasted on every news platform; fears that I could no longer escape, being confined in the tight constraints of my studio apartment’s walls. I cannot shake the devastating effects of sacrifice that I experience as all sense of control has been stripped away from me.

However, amidst my mental anguish, I have realized something important—experiencing these same PTSD symptoms during a global pandemic feels markedly different than it did years ago. Part of it might be the passage of time and the growth in my mindset, but there is something else that feels very different. Currently, there is widespread solidarity and support for all of us facing the chaos of COVID-19, whether they are on the frontlines of the fight against the illness or they are self-isolating due to new rules, restrictions, and risks. This was in stark contrast to what it was like to have a mental disorder. The unity we all experience as a result of COVID-19 is one I could not have predicted. I am not the only student heartbroken over a cancelled graduation, I am not the only student who is struggling to adapt to remote learning, and I am not the only person in this world who has to make sacrifices.

Between observations I’ve made on social media and conversations with my friends and classmates, this time we are all enduring great pain and stress as we attempt to adapt to life’s challenges. As a Peer Assistant for an Education class, I have heard from many students of their heartache over the remote learning model, how difficult it is to study in a non-academic environment, and how unmotivated they have become this quarter. This is definitely something I can relate to; as of late, it has been exceptionally difficult to find motivation and put forth the effort for even simple activities as a lack of energy compounds the issue and hinders basic needs. However, the willingness of people to open up about their distress during the pandemic is unlike the self-imposed social isolation of many people who experience mental illness regularly. Something this pandemic has taught me is that I want to live in a world where mental illness receives more support and isn’t so taboo and controversial. Why is it that we are able to talk about our pain, stress, and mental illness now, but aren’t able to talk about it outside of a global pandemic? People should be able to talk about these hardships and ask for help, much like during these circumstances.

It has been nearly three months since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic. I still have many bad days that I endure where my symptoms can be overwhelming. But somehow, during my good days — and some days, merely good moments — I can appreciate the resilience I have acquired over the years and the common ground I share with others who live through similar circumstances. For veterans of trauma and mental illness, this isn’t the first time we are experiencing pain in an extreme and disastrous way. This is, however, the first time we are experiencing it with the rest of the world. This strange new feeling of solidarity as I read and hear about the experiences of other people provides some small comfort as I fight my way out of bed each day. As we fight to survive this pandemic, I hope to hold onto this feeling of togetherness and acceptance of pain, so that it will always be okay for people to share their struggles. We don’t know what the world will look like days, months, or years from now, but I hope that we can cultivate such a culture to make life much easier for people coping with mental illness.

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

I remember hearing that our brains create the color magenta all on their own. 

When I was younger I used to run out of my third-grade class because my teacher was allergic to the mold and sometimes would vomit in the trash can. My dad used to tell me that I used to always have to have something in my hands, later translating itself into the form of a hair tie around my wrist.

Sometimes, I think about the girl who used to walk on her tippy toes. medial and lateral nerves never planted, never grounded. We were the same in this way. My ability to be firmly planted anywhere was also withered. 

Was it from all the times I panicked? Or from the time I ran away and I blistered the soles of my feet 'til they were black from the summer pavement? Emetophobia. 

I felt it in the shower, dressing itself from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet, noting the feeling onto my white board in an attempt to solidify it’s permanence.

As I breathed in the chemical blue transpiring from the Expo marker, everything was more defined. I laid down and when I looked up at the starlet lamp I had finally felt centered. Still. No longer fleeting. The grooves in the lamps glass forming a spiral of what felt to me like an artificial landscape of transcendental sparks. 

She’s back now, magenta, though I never knew she left or even ever was. Somehow still subconsciously always known. I had been searching for her in the tremors.

I can see her now in the daphnes, the golden rays from the sun reflecting off of the bark on the trees and the red light that glowed brighter, suddenly the town around me was warmer. A melting of hues and sharpened saturation that was apparent and reminded of the smell of oranges.

I threw up all of the carrots I ate just before. The trauma that my body kept as a memory of things that may or may not go wrong and the times that I couldn't keep my legs from running. Revelations bring memories bringing anxieties from fear and panic released from my body as if to say “NO LONGER!” 

I close my eyes now and my mind's eye is, too, more vivid than ever before. My inner eyelids lit up with orange undertones no longer a solid black, neurons firing, fire. Not the kind that burns you but the kind that can light up a dull space. Like the wick of a tea-lit candle. Magenta doesn’t exist. It is perception. A construct made of light waves, blue and red.

Demolition. Reconstruction. I walk down the street into this new world wearing my new mask, somatic senses tingling and I think to myself “Houston, I think we’ve just hit equilibrium.”

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

During the last two weeks of Winter quarter, I watched the emails pour in. Spring quarter would be online, facilities were closing, and everyone was recommended to return home to their families, if possible. I resolved to myself that I would not move back home; I wanted to stay in my apartment, near my boyfriend, near my friends, and in the one place I had my own space. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, things continued to change quickly. Soon I learned my roommate/best friend would be cancelling her lease and moving back up to Northern California. We had made plans for my final quarter at UCI, as I would be graduating in June while she had another year, but all of the sudden, that dream was gone. In one whirlwind of a day, we tried to cram in as much of our plans as we could before she left the next day for good. There are still so many things – like hiking, going to museums, and showing her around my hometown – we never got to cross off our list.

Then, my boyfriend decided he would also be moving home, three hours away. Most of my sorority sisters were moving home, too. I realized if I stayed at school, I would be completely alone. My mom had been encouraging me to move home anyway, but I was reluctant to return to a house I wasn’t completely comfortable in. As the pandemic became more serious, gentle encouragement quickly turned into demands. I had to cancel my lease and move home.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of Spring Break; I never got to say goodbye to most of my friends, many of whom I’ll likely never see again – as long as the virus doesn’t change things, I’m supposed to move to New York over the summer to begin a PhD program in Criminal Justice. Just like that, my time at UCI had come to a close. No lasts to savor; instead I had piles of things to regret. In place of a final quarter filled with memorable lasts, such as the senior banquet or my sorority’s senior preference night, I’m left with a laundry list of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to look around the campus one last time like I had planned; I never got to take my graduation pictures in front of the UC Irvine sign. Commencement had already been cancelled. The lights had turned off in the theatre before the movie was over. I never got to find out how the movie ended.

Transitioning to a remote learning system wasn’t too bad, but I found that some professors weren’t adjusting their courses to the difficulties many students were facing. It turned out to be difficult to stay motivated, especially for classes that are pre-recorded and don’t have any face-to-face interaction. It’s hard to make myself care; I’m in my last few weeks ever at UCI, but it feels like I’m already in summer. School isn’t real, my classes aren’t real. I still put in the effort, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of my classes.

The things I had been looking forward to this quarter are gone; there will be no Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was supposed to present two projects. My amazing internship with the US Postal Inspection Service is over prematurely and I never got to properly say goodbye to anyone I met there. I won’t receive recognition for the various awards and honors I worked so hard to achieve.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I feel guilty for feeling bad about my situation, when I know there are others who have it much, much worse. I am like that quintessential spoiled child, complaining while there are essential workers working tirelessly, people with health concerns constantly fearing for their safety, and people dying every day. Yet knowing that doesn't help me from feeling I was robbed of my senior experience, something I worked very hard to achieve. I know it’s not nearly as important as what many others are going through. But nevertheless, this is my situation. I was supposed to be enjoying this final quarter with my friends and preparing to move on, not be stuck at home, grappling with my mental health and hiding out in my room to get some alone time from a family I don’t always get along with. And while I know it’s more difficult out there for many others, it’s still difficult for me.

The thing that stresses me out most is the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future – how long will this pandemic last? How many more people have to suffer before things go back to “normal” – whatever that is? How long until I can see my friends and family again? And what does this mean for my academic future? Who knows what will happen between now and then? All that’s left to do is wait and hope that everything will work out for the best.

Looking back over my last few months at UCI, I wish I knew at the time that I was experiencing my lasts; it feels like I took so much for granted. If there is one thing this has all made me realize, it’s that nothing is certain. Everything we expect, everything we take for granted – none of it is a given. Hold on to what you have while you have it, and take the time to appreciate the wonderful things in life, because you never know when it will be gone.

Physical Distancing

Thirty days have never felt so long. April has been the longest month of the year. I have been through more in these past three months than in the past three years. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a huge impact on both physical and social well-being of a lot of Americans, including me. Stress has been governing the lives of so many civilians, in particular students and workers. In addition to causing a lack of motivation in my life, quarantine has also brought a wave of anxiety.

My life changed the moment the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the government announced social distancing. My busy daily schedule, running from class to class and meeting to meeting, morphed into identical days, consisting of hour after hour behind a cold computer monitor. Human interaction and touch improve trust, reduce fear and increases physical well-being. Imagine the effects of removing the human touch and interaction from midst of society. Humans are profoundly social creatures. I cannot function without interacting and connecting with other people. Even daily acquaintances have an impact on me that is only noticeable once removed. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an extreme impact on me beyond direct symptoms and consequences of contracting the virus itself.

It was not until later that month, when out of sheer boredom I was scrolling through my call logs and I realized that I had called my grandmother more than ever. This made me realize that quarantine had created some positive impacts on my social interactions as well. This period of time has created an opportunity to check up on and connect with family and peers more often than we were able to. Even though we might be connecting solely through a screen, we are not missing out on being socially connected. Quarantine has taught me to value and prioritize social connection, and to recognize that we can find this type of connection not only through in-person gatherings, but also through deep heart to heart connections. Right now, my weekly Zoom meetings with my long-time friends are the most important events in my week. In fact, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with many of my old friends and have actually had more meaningful conversations with them than before the isolation.

This situation is far from ideal. From my perspective, touch and in-person interaction is essential; however, we must overcome all difficulties that life throws at us with the best we are provided with. Therefore, perhaps we should take this time to re-align our motives by engaging in things that are of importance to us. I learned how to dig deep and find appreciation for all the small talks, gatherings, and face-to-face interactions. I have also realized that friendships are not only built on the foundation of physical presence but rather on meaningful conversations you get to have, even if they are through a cold computer monitor. My realization came from having more time on my hands and noticing the shift in conversations I was having with those around me. After all, maybe this isolation isn’t “social distancing”, but rather “physical distancing” until we meet again.

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• v.12(4); 2021 Aug

COVID-19 prediction models: a systematic literature review

Sheikh muzaffar shakeel.

Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, JSS Academy of Technical Education, Bengaluru, India

Nithya Sathya Kumar

Pranita pandurang madalli, rashmi srinivasaiah, devappa renuka swamy.

As the world grapples with the problem of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its devastating effects, scientific groups are working towards solutions to mitigate the effects of the virus. This paper aimed to collate information on COVID-19 prediction models. A systematic literature review is reported, based on a manual search of 1,196 papers published from January to December 2020. Various databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched. The search strategy was formulated and refined in terms of subject keywords, geographical purview, and time period according to a predefined protocol. Visualizations were created to present the data trends according to different parameters. The results of this systematic literature review show that the study findings are critically relevant for both healthcare managers and prediction model developers. Healthcare managers can choose the best prediction model output for their organization or process management. Meanwhile, prediction model developers and managers can identify the lacunae in their models and improve their data-driven approaches.

Introduction

Healthcare refers to the organized provision of medical care to people and communities. It constitutes the efforts made by qualified and licensed practitioners to preserve or achieve physical, mental, or emotional well-being. Healthcare and medical facilities are regarded as making a significant contribution to the promotion of individuals’ health and well-being. The healthcare industry is responsible for manufacturing and distributing the drugs and services needed to safeguard, cure and sustain well-being. Providing healthcare for patients affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been challenging, especially in India and in Karnataka in particular. Several studies have been performed to understand the spread of COVID-19 and to deal efficiently with COVID-19 patients. The motivation of this study was to collate the available information on various prediction models and to choose accurate models for anticipating the number of cases. Many governments have collected and are trying to analyze data to be better equipped for providing healthcare to COVID-19 patients. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged healthcare facilities, with the sheer number of cases resulting in an acute shortage of capacity that constrained healthcare services [ 1 ]. A study was conducted to identify the best social media platform that can be employed for sentiment analysis and data mining, and the reported methods of data extraction and methodological consideration provide a basis for planning future studies [ 2 ]. State-of-the-art techniques for COVID-19 prediction algorithms are based on commonly used data mining and machine learning techniques to benefit the healthcare sector [ 3 ]. The management of the healthcare system focuses on the overall governance of public health services, including the appropriate and effective use of clinical infrastructure facilities, with a view to attaining the highest benefits for human health.

With the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which causes potentially severe respiratory illness, healthcare systems are facing challenges in order to provide appropriate treatment to support patients. In accordance with the goals of healthcare, there are several factors and aspects of the medical sector that must be actively planned and organized.

Adopting a multi-criteria decision framework, such as the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, is an effective approach to prioritize COVID-19 patients that facilitates detection of the health conditions of asymptomatic carriers and helps stakeholders tackle the complex problem of COVID-19 [ 4 – 6 ]. The TOPSIS framework was developed based on machine learning and multiple-criteria decision-making via the subjective and objective decision by opinion score method to provide effective care and prevent the extremely rapid spread of COVID-19 from affecting patients and the medical sector [ 3 ].

Based on the findings of the systematic literature review (SLR), it is recommended that healthcare systems and stakeholders should use the best prediction model to forecast the number of cases and make the necessary arrangements for imposing social distancing and lock-down measures during the pandemic.

The present study provides insight into various prediction models and how to choose the best model in terms of maximizing accuracy and minimizing errors. This information will be vital in decision-making for government, the healthcare sector and other stakeholders. The findings of this study have implications for the quality of healthcare management. The health system is expected to perform well in all aspects of satisfying the needs of the customers whether those customers are patients, attending physicians, employers, or functional departments within an organization. The current study presents an SLR of papers published from January 2020 to December 2020. The study applied a specific set of inclusion and exclusion criteria to generate comprehensive tables reviewing the literature that contain information about various COVID-19 prediction models, the characteristics considered in prediction, sample size, and model accuracy.

Spread of COVID-19 (World-wide Scenario)

Pandemics are caused by pathogenic microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi) that tear through populations. The bubonic plague of the 14th century infected over 50 million people in Europe and the Spanish flu of 1918 infected a fifth of the world's population. Pandemic influenza, also termed H1N1 influenza/novel influenza/’swine flu,’ ravaged populations worldwide in more recent years [ 7 ].

COVID-19 is an infectious disease that affects the human respiratory system. In December 2019, the illness was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. At the end of December 2019, a number of patients were admitted to hospitals with an initial pneumonia diagnostic test showing an unknown etiology. Since then, COVID-19 has spread around the globe. At the time of writing this paper (July 26, 2021), 90,698,044 cases of the virus had been recorded worldwide. COVID-19 was formally declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The top countries affected by COVID-19 are classified in terms of cases reported, deaths, and recovered cases ( Table 1 ). The United States of America (USA), India, Brazil, Russia, France, United Kingdom, Turkey, Argentina, Colombia, and Spain are the top 10 countries affected by COVID-19. On January 13, 2020, the first case outside China was identified in Thailand [ 8 , 9 ]. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in the USA on January 23, 2020 [ 10 ].

Top 10 most affected countries by coronavirus disease 2019

This data is as of July 29, 2021 from Worldmeter ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ).

Spread of COVID-19 in the Indian Context

India, which is the second most populated country after China, is the country in South Asia with the most COVID-19 cases. On January 30, 2020, India recorded the first case of the disease. Since then, cases have increased significantly and dramatically. In order to reduce the transmission of COVID-19, the government of India announced a nationwide lock-down starting on March 25, 2020, which continued for about 2 months. The number of COVID-19 cases as of July 31, 2021 has reached 197,548,856 confirmed cases and 4,213,071 cases. Within India, Karnataka is the second most strongly affected territory. In the early stages of the global pandemic, Karnataka registered fewer cases than most other Indian states. It was among the early states to deploy new equipment and tools as part of its infrastructure and containment initiatives. The first case in Karnataka was reported on March 9, 2020. The number of COVID-19 cases reported in Karnataka is 928,792 confirmed cases, 906,593 recovered cases and 12,142 deaths (as of January 11, 2021). The government of Karnataka incorporated a gradual lock-down, closing shops and offices, and shutting down inter-district and interstate journeys as part of the initiative to contain the outbreak. The period from March 24 to April 14, 2020 was phase 1 of the lock-down, with the strict restrictions on travel and social interaction. The second phase was from April 15 to May 3, and the third phase lasted from May 4 to May 17 [ 11 ]. Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, had more infections than other parts of the state. On March 9, 2020, the first COVID-19 case was identified in Bengaluru. As of January 11, 2021, the number of COVID-19 infections in Bengaluru amounted to 392,581 confirmed cases, 382,166 recovered cases, and 4,347 deaths. In terms of controlling the virus, Bengaluru has implemented various curfews, public awareness campaigns, and rigorous reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction tests. The mapping of containment zones and predictive modeling conducted by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (a local body) were vital factors for successfully controlling the pandemic ( Figure 1 ).

Region-wise comparison of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases (as of January 2021), presenting the percentage share of COVID-19 cases reported as of January 2021. (A) World vs. India COVID-19 cases. (B) India vs. Karnataka COVID-19 cases. (C) Karnataka vs. Bengaluru COVID-19 cases.

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted by close contact with the droplets spread by sneezing, coughing, and talking to an infected person [ 12 ]. The initial stages in COVID-19 transmission have been attributed to human exposure in the wet animal market in Wuhan, where live animals are frequently sold, and it is speculated that this wet market was likely the main source of COVID-19 [ 13 ]. Efforts are being made to search for transitional carriers from which the infection might have spread to humans; however, regardless of the original source, COVID-19 has shown an unprecedented degree of horizontal spread. Person-to-person transmission takes place by close contact or through droplets spread by an infected person’s cough or sneeze [ 14 ].

WHO Definitions of Key Parameters

Confirmed case: A person with laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection, irrespective of clinical signs and symptoms.

Positive case (same as confirmed case): A person with laboratory confirmation of COVID-19.

Active cases: The value obtained by subtracting the number of recovered cases and the number of deaths from total number of positive cases.

Recovered cases: Those cured of COVID-19 and discharged from a healthcare facility, also referred to as “discharged.”

Death: For surveillance purposes, a COVID-19 death is characterized as a death resulting from a clinically compatible disease in a likely or confirmed case of COVID-19, unless there is a specific alternative cause of death that cannot be attributed to COVID-19 (e.g., trauma). There should be no time of full healing between sickness and death.

Symptoms: A moderate case is defined a confirmed case with fever, respiratory symptoms and radiographic evidence of pneumonia, whereas a case involving dyspnea or respiratory failure is defined as a severe case

Owing to the wide spread of COVID-19 and its devastating effects on humans, several research groups have investigated various aspects of the virus, such as its epidemiological characteristics, socio-economic effects, and factors and parameters aiding the spread of the virus. The present work is an SLR with the following objectives: (1) To systematically review the prediction models that have been developed for COVID-19; (2) To analyze the various COVID-19 prediction models that are currently available; (3) To synthesize and extract useful results and conclusions about the COVID-19 prediction models.

An SLR is a supplementary methodology used to help evaluate studies by capturing principal analyses on the basis of specific criteria. An SLR is carried out on the basis of previous similar studies through a systematic review. The purpose of an SLR is to summarize the studies carried out and to identify gaps between previous studies and current studies.

Okoli [ 15 ] stated that an SLR is “a systematic, explicit, detailed and repeatable approach to identify, assess and analyze the existing body of work by researchers, scholars and practitioners.” According to Tranfield et al. [ 16 ], an SLR is considered as a “fundamental scientific activity.” Moher et al. [ 17 ] presented a checklist for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The objective of this SLR was to understand further the mechanisms and analyses used in prediction models for COVID-19 infections. The research time period for this study was from December 2020 to January 2021. This study was conducted in 4 phases: (1) the development of literature search strategies, (2) the formulation of inclusion and exclusion criteria, (3) quality assessment, and (4) analysis and conclusion.

Research Questions

The wide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in illness and loss of life on a global scale. Research teams have worked on various models to understand the spread of the virus and make data-driven predictions. For the purpose of this SLR, we articulated a research question (RQ) to help focus on the main issue. The motivation and RQs of this study were as follows:

Motivation: To identify methods, techniques, models that support the prediction of COVID-19 infections.

RQ1: What factors support the prediction of COVID-19 infections?

RQ2: What methods and techniques are followed in data-driven modeling for predicting COVID-19 infections?

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Current search engines provide a high level of recall, which leads to a large number of irrelevant resources being retrieved. Therefore, for effective results, a researcher must follow a systematic search strategy. This stage of an SLR screens the literature to find the relevant literature on the basis of particular criteria. In this study, 3 inclusion and exclusion criteria for identifying relevant content and restricting irrelevant content were adopted. The first inclusion criterion was the type of document: only published documents were included, whereas manuscripts under review and unpublished manuscripts were excluded. The domain (i.e., the subject area identified for the study) was the second screening criterion; the authors included documents containing prediction models developed for or used in the COVID-19 domain, while other documents were excluded. The last screening criterion was the language in which the document was released. In order to avoid confusion and complexity related to translation, only documents available in English were included, while documents in other languages were excluded ( Table 2 ).

Inclusion-exclusion criteria

COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019.

Databases and Search Strategies

The terms were searched in several databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, Publish or Perish, and Web of Science [WoS]). The search terms are as follows: prediction models, COVID-19, Coronavirus, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, healthcare, healthcare system, survival model, medical care. Various combinations of the search terms were used to retrieve resources in particular databases. Some of the search strings used are as follows—“Prediction models” AND “COVID-19”; “COVID-19 Datasets” AND “Prediction modeling”; “Predictive Analysis” AND “COVID-19 data” OR “Predictive Analysis” AND “Corona Virus”.

After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 1,196 documents were retrieved, of which 47 were duplicates. Therefore, a total of 1,149 documents continued to the second stage of scrutiny and quality assessment ( Table 3 ). The percentage shares of articles from various databases in the initial, screening, and acceptance stages of the document selection process are illustrated.

Document selection

In the initial phase, out of the total number (i.e., 1,196 documents) of retrieved documents, Google Scholar accounted for 77%, Scopus contained 17%, and WoS had 6% ( Figure 2A ). After the initial screening, 62 documents were included for further consideration. During the screening phase, 52% of the initially included documents were retrieved from Google Scholar. Out of the remaining 30%, Scopus and WoS had an 18% share each ( Figure 2B ). Out of the total accepted documents, 70% were retrieved from Google Scholar, 14% from Scopus, and 16% from WoS ( Figure 2C ).

(A) Document selection (initial). (B) Document selection (screened). (C) Document selection (included). Document selection was carried out based on selection criteria.

The present study focused on publications dealing with COVID-19 prediction models across the world. This review was conducted in January 2021. The country of a research/case was defined by the affiliations of authors in the paper, and a limited research level was observed for several countries (e.g., Canada, Chile, France, Jordan, etc.). Given our particular focus on the spread of the pandemic in India, the highest number of publications was from India and China ( Figure 3 ).

Total articles selected. The blue bars represent the total number of articles included in this systematic literature review.

Quality Assessment and Coding

Quality evaluation of a phenomenon is conducted as a systematic way to avoid biases and errors. Thereby, an SLR includes quality assessment as an essential step. In this study, in the initial phase, 1,196 documents were chosen. Based on their titles, these documents were further analyzed and 62 documents were screened. The content was scrutinized on the basis of the title, abstract, introduction, and conclusion and 30 studies were finally selected for the review.

Related Literature

Prediction models.

A prediction model is a method of becoming aware of a future scenario beforehand based on available data. Predictive modeling mainly uses statistics to predict outcomes [ 18 ]. Forecasting in the COVID-19 pandemic allows medical professionals to better manage facilities and to validate the use of medical and financial resources. It is essential to systematically assess the predictive outcomes of 1 or more prediction models in order to analyze the prediction accuracy of a framework across different study populations, ecosystems, and locations and to assess the need for further developments or improvements of a model [ 19 ]. In this paper, we present a systematic review and analysis of these models as presented in the literature.

Related Works

Coronaviruses are among the main pathogens that predominantly affect the human respiratory system. The focus of the literature review was, therefore, to outline the predominant variables and methodology used in studies related to the spread of the virus. People with prevalent illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, diabetes, stroke, heart, or kidney failure, as well as elderly people with impaired immune systems, are at an increased risk of infection [ 20 ]. Closed areas with low ventilation and airflow may increase the risk of infection. The spread of the virus is believed to occur through respiratory droplets from coughing and sneezing, as with other respiratory viruses, including influenza virus and rhinoviruses. Aerosol transmission is also possible in case of protracted exposure to elevated aerosol concentrations in closed spaces [ 21 ].

Several reports have defined a series of variables in terms of quarantine facilities, laboratory testing facilities, and healthcare capability, contributing to state preparedness to fight the pandemic. The most important and successful of these factors must be explored as an urgent solution to the pandemic. The availability of open data sets corresponding to different variables helps to accelerate studies and forge cooperation [ 22 ]. Environmental factors, such as pollution and basic sanitation, were considered in some studies. Several studies have also taken into consideration deaths due to COVID-19 and other demographic information [ 23 , 24 ]. Other studies and theories have pointed to comorbidities as a key factor in the number of COVID-19 cases [ 25 , 26 ]. Without considering comorbidities, fatalities may be mistakenly interpreted as exclusively COVID-19 deaths. Researchers from many universities in the USA have successfully predicted COVID-19 deaths. One such study was conducted at Columbia University and the CDC (2020), in which “death” was used as an exponential function and a social distance parameter prediction was made using a susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) meta-population model.

Since the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous researchers have attempted to construct statistical models of the COVID-19 pandemic, as can be seen from a primary review of existing models. There are several differences in scope, assumptions, forecasts, the effects of interventions, and their impact on health services [ 27 ]. A PRISMA flow diagram based on the identification of studies from various databases, screening, and the eligibility and inclusion criteria is presented in Figure 4 .

Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses flow diagram.

SLR on COVID-19

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the world are using various methods to explore prediction models with the goal of addressing the problems caused by the pandemic. The motivation for this SLR was to help researchers across the world study the various prediction models that have been created by numerous authors from multiple countries by providing information on a comprehensive range of models in one place. A systematic review is a compilation of various studies related to a single topic. It aims to provide a comprehensive and unbiased review of all the relevant studies in a given field. Our SLR was conducted to determine which prediction models are currently available, and the objective of the study was to identify the various methods used to develop different types of prediction models and to conduct an effectiveness or quality assessment of the models, which helps to evaluate their accuracy. It is hoped that this SLR will help healthcare workers and researchers wisely and confidently choose accurate prediction models to facilitate healthcare management by arranging medical facilities and equipment. Researchers or scholars can enhance their research program by using this SLR to obtain up-to-date information on the various techniques used in prediction models, as well as their efficiency and accuracy. All currently available prediction models for COVID-19 were systematically reviewed and critically appraised. There are currently a number of diagnostic and prognostic models for COVID-19, all of which show moderate to excellent discrimination. To explore the different prediction models and find the best-suited model in terms of providing high accuracy while minimizing the burden on the healthcare system and improving care for patients, both the diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of diseases need to be improved. This study will influence decision-makers in various aspects.

The selected papers deal with different techniques used to build predictive models for the spread of COVID-19. Various techniques are used for the modeling and to present results. Quantitative assessments were also evaluated based on the papers’ presentation of the percentage success/accuracy rate or error rates in statistical and regression models. This SLR sums up the research work of different prediction model developers in detail. In this SLR of prediction models related to the COVID-19 pandemic, we identified 30 studies with various prediction models. Among the 30 papers, the most cited ones were found to be those authored by Chinese researchers, followed by papers authored by Indian researchers and then papers authored by USA-based researchers ( Table 4 ) [ 12 , 28 – 56 ].

Literature review

COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; SEIR, susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed; AI, artificial intelligence; CI, confidence interval; LASSO, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; AUC, area under the curve; XGBoost, eXtreme gradient boosting; LSTM, long short-term memory; ARIMA, autoregressive integrated moving average; RMSE, root mean square error; RMSLE, root mean square logarithmic error; LR, linear regression; MLP, multilayer perceptron; RF, random forest; RNN, recurrent neural network; MAPE, mean absolute percentage error; CC, confirmed case; DC, death case; GEP, genetic evolutionary programming; RC, reported case; GRU, gated recurrent unit; ICU, intensive care unit; PA, prophet algorithm; NIPA, network inference-based prediction algorithm; CRP, C-reactive protein; GOF, goodness of fit; SVM, support vector machine; GLEAM, global epidemic and mobility framework.

To identify the likelihood of future results based on historical data, predictive analytics uses data, statistical algorithms, and different techniques such as machine learning, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, SEIR models, and long short-term memory (LSTM) models. The present SLR also classified papers on the basis of the techniques used ( Table 5 ) [ 12 , 28 – 56 ]. The most commonly used techniques used in predictive modeling and analysis were as follows:

Classification of papers by the technique/tool used

SEIR, susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed; AI, artificial intelligence; LSTM, long short-term memory; RNN, recurrent neural network; GEP, genetic evolutionary programming; GRU, gated recurrent unit; ARIMA, autoregressive integrated moving average; PA, prophet algorithm; GLEM, global epidemic and mobility.

Machine learning

Machine learning is a technique used in which computers evaluate a data set and learn from the insights they gather. An artificial neural network is simulated by the use of complex algorithms that allow machines to classify, interpret, and understand data, and then use the insights that have been obtained to solve problems or make predictions. Common examples of machine learning include classification models, forecasts, medical diagnosis, image processing, regression, chatbots, and recommendation engines. Machine learning is a different branch of programming and is known to be an emerging technology.

ARIMA models

ARIMA models can be built in an array of software tools, including Python. These models are used in statistics and econometrics to measure events that happen over a span of time. ARIMA models predict future data in a series using past data. An ARIMA model can be constructed for any number series that display patterns and is not a random event series. For example, sales data from a footwear store would be an example of time series data because the data are collected over a period of time. One of the key characteristics is that the data are collected at constant, regular intervals [ 57 ].

SEIR models

SEIR models are commonly used for assessing infection data during the different phases of an infectious outbreak. SEIR models are among the most widely adopted mathematical frameworks to describe disease dynamics and forecast potential contagion scenarios. After an infectious disease outbreak, a SEIR model can be helpful in determining the efficacy of different interventions, such as lock-downs. These models are based on a series of complex ordinary differential equations that take into account the number of people who are sick, the pattern of people who recover over time after sickness, and the people who die [ 58 ].

LSTM models

LSTM models are a type of recurrent neural network (RNN) used to predict new infection numbers over time by processing and forecasting several issues related to time series. With repeating modules like an RNN, an LSTM model has a chain-like structure, except that instead of a single neural network layer as in RNNs, an LSTM model has 4 layers that communicate in a slightly different manner, each of which performs its own special network role. In an LSTM cell, each repeating module has a cell state. Through using various gates in the cell, the LSTM cell has the power to add or subtract information to the cell state. There are 3 gates for the standard LSTM cell that control the sum of data input or output to/from the cell state and protect the cell state.

Regression models

Regression analysis is a method of quantitative research that is used in studies modeling and analyzing several variables, where a dependent variable and 1 or more independent variables are included in the relationship. In basic terms, regression analysis is a mathematical approach used to evaluate the existence of the relationship between a dependent variable and 1 or more independent variables [ 59 ]. The 2 most widely used regression analyses are: (a) Logistic regression: in logistic regression, an independent variable is used to estimate the dependent variable. (b) Support vector regression (SVR): SVR provides the flexibility to determine how much error is suitable in a model and to find an appropriate line (or hyperplane in higher dimensions) to match the results.

GLEM models

Global epidemic and mobility (GLEM) models are being used in a number of COVID-19 related studies and analyses. These models involve a stochastic computational framework that combines high-resolution demographic and mobility data across the globe to predict the epidemic distribution across the globe. The goal of the GLEM model is to optimize versatility in specifying the disease compartment model and configuring the simulation scenario. It allows the user to set a number of criteria, including compartment-specific features, transition values, and environmental effects [ 60 ].

This study identified the core literature on prediction models for COVID-19. The aim of this research was to review and analyze the articles in the literature related to prediction models for COVID-19. A prediction model is a method for predicting the future scenario based on present facts. This SLR was based on a manual search of 1,196 papers published from January to December 2020, out of which 30 documents were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our SLR was conducted to explore which prediction models are currently available, with the goals of identifying various methods used to develop different types of prediction models and to conduct an effectiveness or quality assessment of models, which helps in evaluating their accuracy.

Based on this review, it is critical for statistical methods to be extensively used to predict the spread of infection. The LSTM [ 35 ] approach was used to track COVID-19 cases and to help government officials and policymakers in preparedness, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 45.72. An ARIMA [ 47 ] model was used to predict the spread of COVID-19 infection with an average RMSE 44.81, followed by machine learning, artificial intelligence, and hybrid models. Lastly, in a few of the studies, mathematical modeling and network-based forecasting were used. SEIR models are among the most widely adopted mathematical frameworks to describe disease dynamics and forecast potential contagion scenarios. This SLR provides detailed information about various COVID-19 prediction models that can be adopted by researchers. This information can be used by healthcare professionals and by local government bodies in order to make decisions for managing healthcare facilities accordingly.

Ethics Approval

Not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Availability of Data

Data for literature review was taken from Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article. For other data, these may be requested through the corresponding author.

Authors’ Contributions

Conception: all authors; Design: all authors; Supervision: RS, DRS; Literature review: SMS, NSK, PPM; Writing–original draft: all authors; Writing–review & editing: all authors.

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• Paragraph Writing on Covid 19 - Check Samples with Various Word Counts

Examples of Short Paragraph Writing On Covid 19 with Different Word Limits

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a severe global crisis, impacting almost everyone. It is a viral infection that has spread widely, affecting people in various ways. As a virus , it continues to evolve, leading to new variants. The pandemic has changed many aspects of daily life , including education and the economy. Many have lost their lives, jobs, and loved ones.

In this challenging time , Vedantu offers valuable support with online learning resources, helping students continue their education despite disruptions. By providing accessible and effective learning tools, Vedantu plays an important role in supporting students through these difficult times, ensuring they remain on track with their studies. Here, students can find short paragraph writing on Covid 19 in different word limits .

Read the article to learn how to write a Paragraph Writing on Covid 19.

Sample Paragraph Writing on COVID-19: How to Write Your Paragraph

To write a paragraph on Covid-19, start by introducing what the pandemic is and its global impact. Explain that Covid-19 is a viral infection that has affected millions of people around the world. Describe how it changed daily life, such as by disrupting the economy, education, and personal routines. Include specific examples, like the shift to online learning and the increase in remote work . Mention how the pandemic led to new health measures, such as social distancing and vaccinations. Conclude by summarising the overall impact and highlighting the importance of understanding these changes for future reference. Keep your sentences short and straightforward to ensure clarity.

Writing a 100-word Paragraph on COVID-19: A Simple Guide

Covid-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, greatly impacted the world. It spread rapidly, leading to a global health crisis. To control the virus, many countries implemented lockdowns, travel restrictions, and social distancing measures. These actions affected daily life, with people losing jobs, facing financial hardships, and schools shifting to online learning. The pandemic also overwhelmed healthcare systems. Despite these challenges, the global effort to combat the virus, including vaccination drives and medical research, aimed to bring an end to the crisis. Understanding these points helps us understand the wide-reaching effects of Covid-19 on our lives.

Paragraph Writing on Covid 19 in 150 Words

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, began in late 2019 and rapidly spread across the globe, becoming one of the most challenging public health crises in recent history. This virus has led to a wide range of health issues, from mild symptoms to severe illness, causing significant loss of life. In response, countries introduced lockdowns, social distancing guidelines, and mask mandates, profoundly changing daily life and impacting various sectors. Educational institutions shifted to online learning, and many businesses adopted remote work or faced closures, leading to widespread economic difficulties. However, the swift development and distribution of vaccines have been crucial in managing the spread of the virus, significantly reducing severe cases and fatalities. The pandemic has underscored the importance of following public health guidelines, staying updated on health information, and supporting each other during these trying times. By understanding the pandemic's effects on health, society, and the economy, we can better navigate current challenges and prepare for future health crises. To conclude, Paragraph Writing On Covid 19 In 150 Words understanding the impact of COVID-19 helps us appreciate the importance of staying informed and prepared for future challenges.

Writing a 200-word Paragraph on COVID-19: A Simple Guide

COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, emerged in late 2019 and quickly escalated into a global pandemic. This virus spreads primarily through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. It can lead to symptoms ranging from mild, such as a sore throat and fever , to severe conditions, including pneumonia and respiratory failure, which can be fatal. The pandemic has profoundly impacted every aspect of daily life, prompting governments worldwide to implement measures such as lockdowns, travel restrictions, and social distancing. These interventions, while essential for controlling the spread of the virus, have led to significant changes in how people live and work. Many businesses and schools shut down, shifting to remote work and online learning as the new norm. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of adhering to public health practices like regular handwashing, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance .

Vaccines, developed at unprecedented speed, have played a crucial role in mitigating the severity of the disease and reducing mortality rates. Despite these advances, the pandemic has exposed and often exacerbated existing health inequalities and underscored the need for global cooperation in health emergencies. By understanding the impacts of COVID-19, we can better appreciate the importance of preparedness and resilience in addressing future health crises. Adhering to health guidelines remains crucial for safeguarding ourselves and our communities.

Writing a 250-word Paragraph on COVID-19: A Simple Guide

COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. It quickly evolved into a global pandemic, significantly altering daily life across the world. The virus spreads mainly through respiratory droplets from coughing, sneezing, or talking, but it can also be transmitted by touching surfaces contaminated with the virus and then touching the face. Symptoms range from mild, such as cough and fever, to severe, including pneumonia and difficulty breathing. The pandemic triggered unprecedented global responses, including lockdowns, travel restrictions, and social distancing measures. These actions, aimed at limiting the virus's spread, caused widespread disruptions to economies and education systems. Many businesses faced closures, and educational institutions shifted to remote learning, highlighting the need for digital infrastructure and adaptability. Healthcare systems worldwide faced immense pressure, revealing both strengths and weaknesses in pandemic preparedness. The rapid development and distribution of vaccines have been crucial in reducing severe illness and deaths. However, challenges remain, such as ensuring equitable vaccine distribution, managing public health compliance, and addressing the economic fallout. COVID-19 has underscored the importance of global collaboration and timely health interventions. It has shown the need for robust healthcare systems, effective communication , and individual responsibility in combating health crises. The pandemic has also emphasized the significance of science and technology in addressing global challenges and the importance of being prepared for future health emergencies. Continued vigilance, effective health strategies, and community solidarity are essential for overcoming the pandemic and mitigating its long-term impacts. Additionally, COVID-19 has highlighted the resilience and adaptability of communities around the world in the face of unprecedented challenges.

Examples for Paragraph Writing on Covid 19

Example 1: how covid-19 ended and vaccination’s role.

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, significantly impacted global health and daily life since late 2019. To combat the virus, countries introduced lockdowns, social distancing, and travel restrictions. The end of the pandemic began with the development and distribution of effective vaccines, which reduced severe cases and deaths. Mass vaccination campaigns worldwide, combined with public health measures, helped control the virus's spread. As more people were vaccinated and natural immunity developed, the number of new cases declined. By late 2021 and into 2022, many countries started easing restrictions, although the virus continued to circulate in various forms. Global cooperation and adherence to health guidelines played crucial roles in bringing the pandemic under control, though it remains important to monitor and manage ongoing cases.

Example 2: How COVID-19 Affected Everyone’s Daily Life

The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone in profound ways. Individuals experienced disruptions in daily routines, with many facing job losses, financial difficulties, and isolation from loved ones due to lockdowns and social distancing. Schools shifted to online learning, creating challenges for students and parents alike. Healthcare systems were overwhelmed, with hospitals struggling to manage the surge in patients. Businesses faced closures and reduced operations, impacting economies globally. The pandemic also highlighted disparities in healthcare access and resources. Communities had to adapt to new ways of living, from wearing masks to changing work environments. Despite the difficulties, the pandemic showed the resilience of people worldwide and the importance of community support and public health measures in navigating such crises.

Test Your Knowledge of Paragraph Writing on Covid 19

Here are some engaging tasks for students to help them learn how to write a Paragraph on Covid 19:

Task 1 : Describe the Impact of COVID-19 on Daily Life.

Task 2 : Write a Paragraph on How Different Countries Handled the Pandemic.

Now Check Out if You Got them All Right from the Answers Below.

Task 1: describe the impact of covid-19 on daily life.

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed people's daily lives around the world. With lockdowns and social distancing measures, many people had to adapt to working from home. Schools shifted to online learning, which presented challenges for both students and teachers in maintaining engagement and managing resources. Social interactions were limited to virtual meetings and phone calls, reducing face-to-face contact with friends and family. Many people adopted new habits, such as wearing masks and using hand sanitiser regularly, to stay safe. The pandemic also highlighted the importance of health and hygiene , influencing daily routines in profound ways.

Task 2: Write a Paragraph on How Different Countries Handled the Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries adopted various strategies to manage the crisis. For example, New Zealand implemented early and strict lockdown measures, along with comprehensive testing and contact tracing, which effectively controlled the spread of the virus and allowed for quicker economic reopening. In contrast, the United States initially struggled with inconsistent lockdowns and testing shortages, leading to a higher number of cases. While the U.S. eventually increased vaccine distribution, the delayed response in the early months contributed to a more prolonged impact on public health. This comparison shows that early intervention and consistent measures can significantly influence the outcome of pandemic management.

Takeaways from this Page

This page on Paragraph Writing about COVID-19 gives a clear guide on how to write about the pandemic. It explains how to create well-structured paragraphs, using examples and tasks to make learning easier. Students will learn how to describe the impact of COVID-19, including its effects on daily life and the global response. The page also shows how to include important details and write clearly about the topic. By following the tips and examples provided, students will be able to write effective paragraphs on COVID-19 and understand its broader effects.

FAQs on Paragraph Writing on Covid 19 - Check Samples with Various Word Counts

1. What is the main focus of a paragraph writing on Covid 19?

The main focus is to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes its effects on health, daily life, and the global response. Keep your details clear and relevant.

2. How should I start a paragraph about COVID-19?

Begin with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main point about COVID-19. This could be about its spread, impact, or measures taken. Make sure it's engaging and informative.

3. What details should be included in the body of the paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Include key facts like how COVID-19 spread, its effects on people’s lives, and the response from governments. Use simple, direct language and relevant examples to explain these points.

4. How do I keep the short paragraph writing on Covid 19 focused?

Stick to the topic by focusing on specific aspects of COVID-19, such as its impact on daily routines or health. Avoid adding unrelated information to keep the paragraph clear and relevant.

5. What is a good way to end a paragraph writing on Covid 19?

End with a concluding sentence that sums up the main points. You might reflect on the overall impact of COVID-19 or mention ongoing changes and future outlooks.

6. How can I make my paragraph writing on Covid 19 interesting?

Use engaging examples and personal anecdotes if relevant. Describe how COVID-19 has specifically affected different aspects of life to make the paragraph more relatable and interesting.

7. Should I use technical terms in my paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Avoid using too many technical terms. Instead, use simple language that anyone can understand. Explain any necessary terms briefly to ensure clarity.

8. How do I organise my short paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Start with an introduction sentence, follow with detailed sentences about COVID-19’s impact, and end with a concluding sentence. This structure helps in presenting information.

9. How can I add depth to my short paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Include various perspectives, such as how COVID-19 affected different groups of people. Providing specific examples and detailed explanations adds depth and richness to your writing.

10. What should I avoid in my paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Avoid including personal opinions or speculative information. Stick to factual, relevant details about COVID-19 to maintain objectivity and accuracy.

11. How can I check if my paragraph writing on Covid 19 is clear?

Read your paragraph out loud to see if it flows well. Ask someone else to read it and provide feedback on clarity and understanding. Make sure each sentence contributes to the main point.

12. Can I use quotes or statistics in my short paragraph writing on Covid 19?

Yes, using quotes or statistics can add credibility to your paragraph. Just make sure to explain them clearly and relate them directly to the main points about COVID-19.

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COVID-19 transmission

COVID-19 spreads primarily from person to person in several different ways:

• It can spread through small liquid particles. These particles range from larger respiratory droplets to smaller aerosols released when an infected person coughs, sneezes, speaks, sings or breathes.
• It spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 metre.
• It can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings where aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 metre.
• It can also spread if a person touches surfaces that have been contaminated by the virus.

Last updated: 8 August 2023

Aerosol transmission

COVID-19 transmission person to person

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• Published: 31 October 2023

MultiCOVID: a multi modal deep learning approach for COVID-19 diagnosis

• Max Hardy-Werbin 1 , 3 ,
• José Maria Maiques 2 ,
• Marcos Busto 2 ,
• Isabel Cirera 3 ,
• Alfons Aguirre 3 ,
• Nieves Garcia-Gisbert 1 ,
• Flavio Zuccarino 2 ,
• Santiago Carbullanca 2 ,
• Luis Alexander Del Carpio 2 ,
• Didac Ramal 2 ,
• Ángel Gayete 2 ,
• Jordi Martínez-Roldan 4 ,
• Albert Marquez-Colome 5 ,
• Beatriz Bellosillo 1 , 6 &
• Joan Gibert 1 , 6  

Scientific Reports volume  13 , Article number:  18761 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Computational biology and bioinformatics
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The rapid spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 led to a global overextension of healthcare. Both Chest X-rays (CXR) and blood test have been demonstrated to have predictive value on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) diagnosis on different prevalence scenarios. With the objective of improving and accelerating the diagnosis of COVID-19, a multi modal prediction algorithm (MultiCOVID) based on CXR and blood test was developed, to discriminate between COVID-19, Heart Failure and Non-COVID Pneumonia and healthy (Control) patients. This retrospective single-center study includes CXR and blood test obtained between January 2017 and May 2020. Multi modal prediction models were generated using opensource DL algorithms. Performance of the MultiCOVID algorithm was compared with interpretations from five experienced thoracic radiologists on 300 random test images using the McNemar–Bowker test. A total of 8578 samples from 6123 patients (mean age 66 ± 18 years of standard deviation, 3523 men) were evaluated across datasets. For the entire test set, the overall accuracy of MultiCOVID was 84%, with a mean AUC of 0.92 (0.89–0.94). For 300 random test images, overall accuracy of MultiCOVID was significantly higher (69.6%) compared with individual radiologists (range, 43.7–58.7%) and the consensus of all five radiologists (59.3%, P  < .001). Overall, we have developed a multimodal deep learning algorithm, MultiCOVID, that discriminates among COVID-19, heart failure, non-COVID pneumonia and healthy patients using both CXR and blood test with a significantly better performance than experienced thoracic radiologists.

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Introduction.

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), stroke the worldwide population with more than 200 million cases and 4.5 million deaths by August 2021. The rapid spread of the pandemic led to a global overexertion of health care and research facilities in order to counteract the growing rate of infection. However, a collapse of the sanitary system was imminent and inevitable worldwide, and new technologies were needed to speed up the diagnostic process.

The reference for COVID-19 diagnosis is the detection of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). However, the massive requests for sample processing at the beginning of the pandemic caused serious delays to obtain results.

As lung involvement is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in SARS-CoV-2 infection, a quick identification of characteristic findings in chest imaging can support the diagnosis and speed up the identification of COVID-19 positive patients at the emergency units.

Several studies have shown that implementation of deep learning (DL) tools to detect chest X-rays (CXR) findings typically associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, deliver comparable results to those acquired by interpretation of radiologists. However, most of the trained models have a drop in their prediction performance when tested over external datasets 1 . In addition, one of the main hurdles to overcome when training an algorithm to detect Sars-CoV-2 infection in CXR is the similarity of findings with other entities like bacterial pneumonias or heart failure 2 . On the other hand, models based on laboratory results of peripheral blood also give predictive results on diagnosis 3 and prognosis 4 .

A key fact to highlight is how the incursion of COVID-19 caused a dramatic drop in the emergency room consultations of other pathologies. Later on, after the initial peak, the decline of the COVID-19 prevalence made the non-COVID diseases emerge once again at the hospitals. This is relevant due to the challenge of performing an efficient differential diagnosis with selected pathologies during a pandemic. It is well known that the predictive value of a diagnostic test is conditioned by the prevalence of the disease and that of COVID varies widely throughout the different waves of the pandemic 5 . A multicategory approach that takes into account differential diagnoses that are more stable in their prevalence could reduce this variability.

With the objective of improving and accelerating the diagnosis of COVID-19, we developed a tool to assist physicians in reaching a diagnosis. This tool is a multi-modal prediction algorithm (MultiCOVID) based on CXR and blood test with the ability to discriminate between COVID-19, Heart Failure (HF), Non-COVID Pneumonia (NCP) and healthy (Control) samples.

Materials and methods

We retrospectively collected CXR images and hemogram values from 8578 samples from 6123 patients and healthy subjects (mean age 66 ± 18 years of standard deviation, 3523 men) from Parc Salut Mar (PSMAR) Consortium, Barcelona, Spain. Four cohorts were designed: (i) 1171 samples from patients diagnosed with COVID-19 by RT-PCR from March to May 2020; (ii) 1008 samples of patients who suffered an episode of heart failure between 2012 to 2019; (iii) 490 samples of patients diagnosed with non-COVID pneumonia (NCP) from 2018 to 2019; (iv) 5909 samples of standard preoperatory studies of healthy subjects from 2017 to 2019 (Fig.  1 ). HR and NCP diagnosis were selected as defined by the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code. All the CXR images from groups i-iii were validated by two independent radiologists (MB and JM).

Flowchart for sample selection and patient inclusion in the study and breakdown of training, validation, and hold-out test data sets. Around 25,000 entries were obtained using both CXR images and blood test in a time wise manner. The whole dataset totals 8822 entries of paired CXR and blood test data. Samples with low completeness (less than 80% of blood test data available) were discarded for the model building.

Acquisition of blood sample and image data

We included CXR images performed in a period ranging from 1 day before the patient’s diagnosis to 7 days after. The images were filtered to include only frontal projections regardless of the quality and the radiography system used. Blood sample results were collected within a range of 2 days before or 7 days after the CXR acquisition date using PSMAR lab record system, except for control samples whose measurements ranged for 2 weeks. If two or more blood test results were collected, measurements were averaged.

CXR images and blood test results were combined in the same dataset and split into train/validation set (90%), and hold-out test (10%) set. For training/validation split, we divided the dataset in training (80%) and validation (20%) sets with 5 different random seeds. We ensured that there were no cross-over patients between groups.

Deep learning models

Detailed description of the models, training policy and image preprocessing are provided in Supplementary Material . In brief, segmentation model is based on a U-Net architecture 6 . The CXR-only classification model consists of a validated Convolutional neural network (CNN) resnet-34 architecture 7 . Tabular only-model is an Attention-based network (TabNet) 8 . Joint model is a multi-modal deep learning algorithm which merges the CXR-only and the Blood-only models and uses both CXR image and blood tests as input values. It uses Gradient Blending in order to prevent overfitting and improve generalization 9 . MultiCOVID model is an ensemble predictor of 5 different Joint models that would classify independently between the different classes. Then it uses majority vote to assign a final classification. The whole pipeline development and training was performed using fastai deep learning API 10 .

Comparison with thoracic radiologist interpretations

Hold-out test dataset consisting of 300 samples (ensuring no patient overlap with training or validation sets) was used for expert interpretation. Each sample consisted of a CXR with matched blood results. Expert interpretations were independently provided by five board-certified thoracic radiologists (FZ, SC, LdC, DR, AG) with 2–30 years post-residency training experience. Radiologists were able to check both non segmented images and blood test results without any other additional information in a platform created ad-hoc for prediction. They provided a classification for each image in one of the four categories (COVID-19, control, HF and NCP). A consensus interpretation for the radiologist was obtained by the majority vote for each paired CHX-blood test analyzed.

Statistical analysis

A two-tailed t-test P value was reported when clinical and population blood test differences were assessed. McNemar–Bowker test was used to compare model performance against radiologist majority vote using FDR correction. Plotting and statistical analyses were performed using the packages ggplot, ggpubr and rcompanion in R, version 3.6 (R Core Team; R Foundation for Statistical Computing).

Ethical approval

The study was designed to use radiology images and associated clinical/demographic/ laboratory patient information already collected for the purpose of performing clinical COVID-19 research by Hospital del Mar. The study was conducted in accordance with the relevant institutional guidelines and regulations. The experimental protocols, data acquisition and analysis were approved by the Parc de Salut Mar Clinical Research Ethics Committee (2020/9199/I). Informed consent was obtained, when possible, from patients or legal representatives or waived by the local Parc de Salut Mar Clinical Research Ethics Committee (2020/9199/I) if informed consent was not available due to the pandemic situation.

Patient characteristics

A total of 8578 samples were evaluated across datasets. Patient characteristics and blood test parameters are shown in Table 1 . A highly significant difference in age was found between the cohort of patients with heart failure (82.8 ± 10 years) and the other three cohorts (66.0 ± 16 years for COVID-19 samples, 63.2 ± 18 years for control samples and 67.8 ± 17 years for NCP samples, P  < 0.001 for each comparison) and was not considered as a valid variable for further classification.

Whole CXR models learn spurious characteristics for classification

Previous studies have demonstrated that deep learning (DL)-based algorithms should be rigorously evaluated due to their ability to learn non relevant features in order to increase its prediction accuracy 1 . For this reason, we first developed a segmentation algorithm able to segment lung parenchyma at a 95%-pixel accuracy. Then, after segmentation, we evaluated the accuracy of the algorithms for three complementary datasets: non-segmented images, segmented regions and excluded regions. After a few training epochs the three different models achieved nonrandom accuracies between 67 and 74% (Fig.  2 A). However, attention map exploration on the images showed that the different models based their predictions not only inside but also outside of the lung parenchyma (Fig.  2 B).

Performance of visual models on whole CXR images. ( A ) Confusion matrix and overall accuracy using whole image, segmented and inverse segmented images, respectively for each category tested. ( B ) Raw image and Grad-CAM heatmap representation of an image for each category and model trained.

These observations showed that, although there are important features outside the lung parenchyma that may help the model to classify between the different entities (eg. heart size), there are other elements (eg. oxygen nasal cannulas or intravenous (IV) catheters) that might confound the model. Thus, we decided to first segment all the CXR before training our models for prediction of diagnosis. In order to accomplish this task, we generated a 785-radiology level lung segmentation dataset and trained a U-net model to regenerate the whole CXR dataset keeping only the lung parenchyma.

Performance of single and multimodal models

In order to evaluate the prediction capacity of both segmented CXR and blood sample data, we built different DL models using both sources alone or in combination. Metrics comparison of all the single vision (CXR-only) and tabular (Blood-only) models are detailed in Supplementary Material . As expected, CXR-only models had a more robust prediction of all 4 categories tested compared to Blood-only models (Fig.  3 ). This difference is stronger in the classes with less samples (HF, and NCP) where CXR-only models could identify features in the CXR images which are characteristic of these two entities whereas this was not possible with Blood-only models.

Performance of different models on the entries from hold-out test datasets. Means for precision (green), sensitivity (blue), F1 score (yellow), AUC (red) and accuracy (black diamond) for each model type and category assessed, respectively. CXR-only models use only CXR images for 4 category classification. Blood-only models use blood test a source of information. Joint model uses both CXR and blood test as input for classification and MultiCOVID is the majority vote of 5 different Joint models.

Model interpretability of Blood-only models by analyzing feature importance using Shapley Additive explanations 12 showed that patient classification was related to two different axes: the immune compartment and the red blood cell (RBC) compartment, respectively (Fig.  4 A). The first axis seems to be strongly associated with COVID-19 classification and shows a specific signature looking at the blood counts (Fig.  4 B-top). However, the second axis seems to subdivide patients between COVID-19/Control and HF/NCP, although COVID-19 blood counts seems to be statistically different from Control samples, too (Fig.  4 B-bottom).

Blood-only model interpretability by SHAP analysis. ( A ) Summary plot showing the mean absolute SHAP value of the ten most important features for the four classes. ( B ) Blood test values of the different features identified by SHAP analysis. RDW-CV: red cell distribution width; MCHC: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration; RBC: red blood cells.

The combination of CXR and blood tests using multimodal models that combine inputs from tabular and image data to perform a global prediction, slightly increased the prediction capacity of the single models even when DL tabular models are worse than machine learning (ML—XGBoost) models alone (Supplementary Table 1 ). This underpins the concept that adding new sources of information to the data could increase the ability of the models to generate better predictions 13 . Moreover, the joint approach used for building MultiCOVID algorithm resulted on an improved performance in the majority of the metrics analyzed (Fig.  3 and Supplementary Table 1 ).

Comparison with expert thoracic radiologists

Finally, we compared the performance of MultiCOVID algorithm with the interpretation of expert chest radiologists. This comparison was performed with 300 CXR randomly selected from the hold-out test set that were independently reviewed by 5 radiologists together with the blood test results. The independent results from radiologists showed an accuracy ranging from 43.7 to 58.7%. This value rose to 59.3% (178/300) when the consensus interpretation of all 5 radiologists based on the majority vote was considered. Of note, the overall accuracy achieved by MultiCOVID was 69.6% (209/300) that was significantly higher than consensus interpretation ( P  < 0.001). In addition, for COVID-19 prediction individually, MultiCOVID showed similar sensitivity to the radiologists’ consensus but with a much higher specificity, leading to significantly better performance when discerning between COVID-19 versus Control and COVID-19 vs HF patients ( P  < 0.05 for both comparisons; Fig.  5 ).

Comparison of the performance of MultiCOVID model with consensus expert radiologist interpretations on random sample of 300 images from the test set. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for each category (COVID-19 – blue; Control – green; Heart Failure (HF) – red and Non-COVID Pneumonia (NCP) – magenta) are shown for MultiCOVID (DL) and for the consensus interpretation of radiologists (majority vote). Sensitivity (Sens) and specificity (Spec) are also plotted for each category assessed. DL: deep learning.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 is an evolving challenge. During the beginning of the pandemic and the successive peaks with high prevalence rates, a prompt and effective diagnosis was critical for proper patient isolation and evaluation. However, since the prevalence of the COVID-19 cases oscillated, showing fewer cases between waves, and more non-COVID cases, it was important to differentiate patients with other diseases than COVID-19 presenting similar visual characteristics in the CXR.

During patient assessment in the emergency room, clinicians take into account different inputs for a proper diagnosis. First, the anamnesis, symptoms, vitals and physical findings guide the physician to an initial assumption. Based on this information, additional tests are requested (CXR, blood test, ECG and SARS-CoV-2 detection). The integration of these results allows the team to diagnose a patient accurately. However, this process is time consuming and sometimes findings are difficult to interpret, leading to misdiagnosis.

To improve this diagnostic process, we have developed and trained a multimodal deep learning algorithm based in a multiple input approach combining CXR images together with blood sample data to identify COVID-19 diagnosis with high sensitivity. This way we were able to manage the increased complexity of the dataset. These data from multiple sources are somehow correlated and complementary to each other and could reflect patterns that are not present in single models alone 13 .

Hence, MultiCOVID is fed by two of the most common and fast clinical tests requested in the emergency room (CXR and Blood test) and can predict the presence of three different diseases (COVID-19, heart failure and non-COVID pneumonia) with similar CXR characteristics.

Analysis of single models shows the importance of model interpretation. While CXR-only models could identify patterns outside the lung parenchyma that could diminish its generalization capacity 9 , Blood-only models could point to interesting population of cells that are differently represented in COVID-19 patients, leveraging its prediction capacity. In this context, the immune compartment plays an important role in the COVID-19 response, and it has been already published that COVID-19 patients present fewer overall leukocytes counts and, more concretely, eosinophil counts 14 , 15 . Furthermore, oxygen transport seems to be somehow affected, modulating the red cell population. In this regard, in our work we found significant differences in the erythrocyte count and the hemoglobin concentration. Although most of the studies correlate the reduction of this values to severe COVID-19 patients 16 , this is the first dataset to compare them in these four different categories at the time of diagnosis.

Moreover, although a huge amount of literature about COVID-19 diagnosis and prognosis has been published using only blood tests 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 or CXR 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 this is the first study that combines both parameters and compares its prediction capacity at diagnosis. Of note, only one previously published study integrates both blood test and CXR severity scores in order to determine in-hospital death of COVID-19 patients 29 . Hence, it is clear that merging both sources of data leads to a better prediction performance when compared with the two single models alone and that this difference is more pronounced where the number of cases is scarce. It is important to stress that this combination of data sources addresses the variable prevalence of COVID-19 cases during the pandemic, which is an issue that could not be solved in previous studies 23 , 24 .

Our study has several limitations. First, the algorithm was evaluated on a single center; thus, there was likely some degree of bias. Additionally, the sample collection was performed in different time periods for each group of patients, which could present some kind of differences in the CXR image acquisition although this was partially solved using the lung segmentation model which removes the noise signal present outside the lung parenchyma. And finally, model performance could be influenced by potential shifts in the disease landscape due to COVID-19 variants and vaccination efforts, which could influence the generalizability and interpretation of our findings.

Conclusions

We have developed a multimodal deep learning algorithm, MultiCOVID, that discriminates among COVID-19, heart failure, non-COVID pneumonia and healthy patients using both CXR and blood test with a significantly better performance than experienced thoracic radiologists.

Our approach and results suggest an innovative scenario where COVID-19 prediction could be identified from other similar diseases and facilitate triage within the emergency room in a COVID-19 low prevalence situation.

Data availability

Our code base is provided on GitHub at https://github.com/Tato14/MultiCOVID , including weights for each of the individually trained neural network architectures and respective model weights for the weighted ensemble model. The datasets used and analyzed during the current study will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. In order to correct samples bias 11 , additional metadata information present in the DICOM image headers from the CXR would be also available upon request.

Abbreviations

Deep learning

Chest X-rays

Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve

Coronavirus disease 2019

Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

Heart failure

Non-COVID pneumonia

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M.H.-W.: Data curation , Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; J.M.M.: Data curation , Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; M.B.: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; I.C.: Data curation, Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; A.A.: Data curation, Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; N.G.-G.: Investigation, Visualization, Project administration, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editin; F.Z.: Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; S.C.: Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing, L.A.D.C.: Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing, D.R.: Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; Á.G.: Validation, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editin; J.M.-R.: Project administration, Supervision, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; A.M.-C.: Data curation, Project administration, Supervision, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing; B.B.: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editin; J.G.: Data curation, Formal analysis; Investigation, Visualization, Project administration, Supervision, Roles/Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

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Hardy-Werbin, M., Maiques, J.M., Busto, M. et al. MultiCOVID: a multi modal deep learning approach for COVID-19 diagnosis. Sci Rep 13 , 18761 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46126-8

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Received : 10 February 2023

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Published : 31 October 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-46126-8

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