In the last 24 hours in Italy there have been 15,543 new cases of Covid 19 and 59 deaths. Yesterday the infected were 17,550, the victims 89. The swabs processed are 137,133 (yesterday
149,497) with a positivity rate that falls from 11.7 to 11.3%. The total number of Covid cases detected since the beginning of the pandemic in Italy is 22,020,154. This is what emerges from the bulletin of the Ministry of Health.
There are 172 patients admitted to intensive care, thirteen fewer than yesterday, in the balance between entries and exits, while daily admissions are 13. On the other hand, 4,017 hospitalized in ordinary wards are 133 less in the last twenty-four hours. The currently positive are 502,811, compared to 12,620 less yesterday. 21,341,186 (+28,103) have been discharged and healed, while the total deaths since the beginning of the pandemic is 176,157.
From the EU 8.4 million to study the neurological effects of Covid
Studying the long-term neurological and psychiatric effects linked to Covid-19, such as loss of smell and taste, reduced ability to concentrate, cognitive and memory deficits, psychosis and epilepsy: this is the goal of the Neurocov project, funded by the European Commission with € 8.4 million for five years, under the new Horizon Europe research framework program. Coordinated by the German Research Center on Neurodegenerative Diseases (Dzne), the project allocates 3.2 million to Italian research, coordinated by Human Technopole. Another eight institutes from seven countries (Belgium, Germany, Finland, Israel, Sweden and the Netherlands) are involved in the project. The aim is to identify the mechanism that triggers the so-called NeuroCovid, as neurological and neuropsychiatric complications are called, to know which nerve cells are attacked by the SarsCoV2 virus and which factors make individuals vulnerable or resistant to these complications.
Study: An app can detect the infection in the voice thanks to Ai
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect Covid-19 infection in the voice through an app. This is stated by researchers from the University of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, who presented a study a few days ago at the International Congress of the European Respiratory Society in Barcelona. Researchers say the AI model used is more accurate than rapid antigen tests, 89% of the time, as well as faster and easier to use.
The team worked on data from the University of Cambridge’s Covid-19 Sounds app: it contains 893 audio samples from 4,352 healthy and sick participants, of which 308 tested positive for the virus. Users were asked to cough three times, breathe deeply through the mouth three to five times, and read a short sentence on the screen three times.
The researchers used a speech analysis technique called “Mel Spectrogram” to identify different characteristics of the voice such as volume, variation and power.
“These results suggest that voice recordings and improved artificial intelligence algorithms can potentially achieve high accuracy in determining which patients have the infection. They could be used, for example, at entry points for large gatherings, enabling rapid screening.” explains Wafaa Aljbawi of the Institute of Data Science at Maastricht University.
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