In Australia, researchers have developed a tool that determines a person's risk of contracting COVID-19 and complications from vaccines. 

Non-profit Immunisation Coalition collaborated with the University of Queensland, Flinders University, La Trobe University, and the Queensland University of Technology to create the  COVID-19 Risk Calculator (CoRiCal) tool. 

WHAT IT DOES

Users just have to input their age, sex, community transmission and vaccination status in the online tool to get their personalised risk calculation. This calculation is based on a modelling framework crafted by Professor Colleen Lau and Dr Helen Mayfield of UQ School of Public Health and QUT Prof. Kerrie Mengersen.

UQ virologist Dr Kirsty Short explained that users can, for example, find out about the chances of getting infected with COVID-19 versus their chances of dying from the disease. 

They can also find out their risk of developing an atypical blood clot from any vaccine and compare this with other relatable risks, such as getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery, she added.  

Currently, the tool is in its pilot stage and will be updated in line with the latest health and scientific advice, including risk assessments on Pfizer and Modern vaccines, pre-existing medical conductions such as obesity and diabetes and long COVID. 

Dr Andrew Baird, a GP based in Melbourne, added that the calculator is adaptable for "booster doses, new viral strains, new vaccines, younger age groups, international markets and even for other infectious diseases".

WHY IT MATTERS

According to Dr Short, the CoRiCal was designed to assist people in making informed decisions around vaccinations. Using simple bar charts, the calculator makes it easy to compare people's risks for different outcomes related to COVID-19 and vaccines, Dr Baird pointed out. 

John Litt of Immunisation Coalition said he hopes that the risk calculator would help GPs save time. "GPs are spending a lot of time trying to explain the risks of COVID-19 and the various vaccines to their patients. An accurate, evidence-based tool that is transparent and unaligned with professional groups should help GPs in their task of facilitating COVID vaccination for their patients," he said.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

A similar web-based tool was launched recently by AI systems developer Deep Longevity in Hong Kong. Its COVID Risk Calculator estimates the survival of a hospitalised COVID-19 patient. 

In India, a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Australia-based QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute has created a classification algorithm to determine whether a COVID-19 patient is likely to show severe symptoms.