Apple Watch and other smartwatches have a lot of use. They will allow you to be productive and do a lot of tasks that you can normally do with a phone or computer. Did you know that recent research has proven that Apple Watch and other smartwatches can help fight against covid-19 by detecting its early warning signs and symptoms? If you are interested, be sure to read this article. Without further ado, let’s start:
How can Apple Watch detect early onset of covid-19?
Experts at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discovered that smartwatches like the Apple Watch have the ability to identify slight alterations in a person’s heart rhythm, which could indicate an early onset of the coronavirus. This subtle heart beat change can happen as early as a week before the coronavirus can be detected by means of regular swab testing and other testing methods.
Rob Hirten, working as an assistant professor in Mount Sinai stated that the objective of their study is to find out methods to pinpoint covid-19 infections on the earliest possible time, even before the symptoms show up.
This study was peer reviewed recently by the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Keep in mind that other smartwatches with heartbeat tracking capabilities can also work in this regard. This means that you don’t have to own Apple hardware to take advantage of this new development. It can be done with apple watch series 5 bands, Fitbit smartwatch, Samsung smartwatch, or any other brands as long as they have heartbeat monitoring.
In particular, the research examined a metric known as heart rate variability. This metric measures the time changes or variety for every heartbeat. With this in mind, heart rate variability determines how good a person’s immune system is. Rob Hirten, the researcher previously mentioned in this article stated that heart rate variability changes due to inflammations developing within the human body, and covid-19 causes a lot of inflammation.
The information gathered by smartwatches can be a key component when it comes to curbing the coronavirus pandemic, especially since most carriers show no symptoms for the first few days or even weeks of infection. This is in accordance with data that was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The research discovered that people infected with covid-19 are affected by reduced heart rate variability compared to people who are not infected. Reduced heart rate variability do not automatically cause an increased heart rate, contrary to popular belief. However, some study supports the increase heart rate theory for covid-19 positives.
Other suitable watches for detecting early covid-19 symptoms
A different research from Stanford has also shown that other smartwatches, primarily from Fitbit, Garmin, etc can detect positive coronavirus positive cases. This study has shown that an increased rate of heartbeat is an early symptom of a coronavirus infection.
Experts made use of data gathered by smartwatches to recognize approximately 66 percent of positive covid-19 cases days or even a full week before symptoms appear.
