Ever since the Spanish flu created havoc in 1918 leading to the deaths of nearly 100 million people with the downfall of the economy, it was called a pandemic attack. Likewise, COVID-19, the novel coronavirus was earlier declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization sending waves of fear across the globe.

The consequences of COVID-19 is grave and unsettling. The number of fatalities across the globe keeps increasing at a rapid pace with no signs of slowing down. Italy and France are currently in complete lockdown. The Australians traveling overseas were asked to return to their countries as soon as possible. The US just witnessed it’s their 100th death in the country.

Scientists and researchers across the world are acting fast to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 before it comprehends the full extent of damage around the world. Will new technologies help fight against this deadly virus? According to experts, these technologies could create wonders, via sharing of health data, modeling the data, developing drugs, and implementation of robots to clean the unsafe areas and treat people in the quarantine areas.

Surprisingly, the spread of the pandemic has brought across the implementation of big data analytics and artificial intelligence to fight against the virus. This involves various sectors across the healthcare industry seeking to reduce and monitor the impact this virus has caused.

What the world is doing to fight coronavirus?

Top companies’ executives such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple met with the officials at Downing Street to discuss whether they’re capable enough to fight the pandemic. Their focus was majorly on using big data and AI to track the health of those closely related to the infection. China has successfully been able to use big data analytics and AI in response to COVID-19 while the rest of the world is still manipulating whether they can use the same approach in retracting the virus.

China: their approach toward COVID-19

Train stations at major cities in China installed thermal scanners. These scanners use big data and AI to recognize and identify those showing symptoms of fever ever before alerting people traveling within the same station or traveling in the same carriage.

Additionally, if someone is to travel via public transport the individual had to purchase a ticket using personal identification, this act certainly made is possible to have close information about the passengers traveling history.

Using the same safety measures even other countries can start installing thermal scanners and facial recognition technology in public places.

Another AI company stated they’re closely working on a tech solution in combination with face detention, body detection, and dual-sensing with the help of infrared cameras helping staff or workers identify people having high temperatures. While on the other hand, another AI company launched an AI-based solution to improve healthcare facilities, imaging processes, and diagnoses speed offering 96 percent accuracy at analyzing the virus. This can drastically transform the lives of healthcare and medical workers who are currently on duty and who are under-equipped.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently said that data science and the AI industry have become a major part of China’s response to COVID-19.

Sharing of data

Social media is playing a significant role in analyzing how people are reacting toward the pandemic with the help of tools such as Crowdtangle.

Facebook is making a tremendous outbreak by working with researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan as such that the data of people’s movement is shared along with high-resolution density maps helping them forecast the spread of the virus.

During the past years, Google search data was used to track infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, Google is coming up with a small body-worn temperature patch that easily transmits data to the phone app. This will help people track their health.

This patch could be ideal for people of the elderly population — where the rates of morbidity and mortality are high.

Developing drugs

Exscienta, a British startup was the first company to put the AI-designed drug molecule under human trial earlier this year. Ideally, it took about 12 months for the algorithm to create it, however, this will need traditional research of four to five years.

According to chief executive Prof Andrew Hopkins, AI could be easily used in three-way in present times:

👉To scan through the existing drugs and see whether it could be repurposed or not.

👉Design drugs that could fight both the current and future coronavirus outbreaks.

👉Develop antibodies and vaccines for COVID-19.

As mentioned above, the fastest way possible for this to take place will take at least 18–24 months.

Sadly, it is much longer than what is needed at the current crisis.