We’ve all seen representations of this nasty bug, but what’s been difficult to find is detailed data on its first effects on patients – then I contracted it. It’s just a single case, but due to my work and unlike most patients, I had been wearing a continuous respiratory and heart rate monitor. We were thus able to pinpoint the first physiological indications of the infection and its impacts before symptoms set in. Specifically, the sensors captured an almost 50% increase in resting heart rate about a day and a half before changes in Oxygen saturation levels, as illustrated by the images below.
I was able to track the disease’s progression and my body’s response to experimental monoclonal antibody therapy, which proved effective at significantly reducing measured and felt symptoms within 48 hours. I kept a log throughout the disease process, which turned into a detailed report for my doctor. He may disseminate the information to others on his team and to researchers evaluating monoclonal antibody treatment efficacy.
Unfortunately, heart rate and oxygen saturation alone are limited in describing Covid’s full impacts on the body’s cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Biobeat’s cuffless monitors, which I’ve previously discussed, would have provided broader insights including continuous body temperature, blood pressure, cardiac output, systemic vascular resistance, and mean arterial pressure. I expect that these innovative technologies will help engineers, epidemiologists, and clinicians develop early detection tools and digital fingerprints of infectious agents that more accurately quantify their spread and transmissibility. These in turn will help epidemiological models like SIR make faster, more accurate, and useful predictions. Similarly, improved physiological monitoring should guide clinicians in developing individual patient treatment strategies.