Two cases of COVID-19 monitored by a wearable biosensor-a case report

Wearable devices have gained popularity in recent years for tracking metrics related to personal health and well-being such as vital signs, motion, and sleep. Wearable devices are considered to have a very high potential value for detecting, monitoring, and controlling the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, based on their ability to collect data in a non-invasive and contactless manner. With the Biostrap wrist-worn device (Biostrap USA LLC, Duarte, CA, USA), a commercially available, clinically validated wearable device that uses photoplethysmography to automatically record physiological data such as resting heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation (SpO₂), and arterial stiffness (AS), we collected biometric data from 933 subjects. We present two cases of patients who have tested positive for the presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), a 24-year-old man experiencing major symptoms and another a 49-year-old man with only intermittent fatigue, and show the marked changes in biometric measurements around dates of symptom onset and positive test. We observed a pattern of sustained respiratory rate elevation in both patients, punctuated by a sharp spike in heart rate and decreased AS. The latter contradicted our expectation that during the onset of symptoms of COVID-19, an increase in AS might occur.