Role of Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Technology for combating COVID19 Pandemic

COVID-19 is a pandemic that is affecting people’s lives on a large scale all over the world. It is caused by a family of viruses known as the coronavirus shown in figure 1. This virus is life-threatening and has caused many deaths. This virus is transferred from one person to another and thus it has affected the whole world in a very short period of time. Till now there are more than 6.2 million corona active cases and more than 3.7 lakhs of people have died due to this virus all over the world. Its symptoms start from the common cold to SARS and MERS which are life-threatening.

Its outbreak started from the Chinese city Wuhan. Many countries all over the world have announced a lockdown for the safety of its people. The situation is worse; we have never seen any pandemic like this causing deaths rapidly. All transports, companies, schools are closed. Social distancing and stay at home is the best solution to avoid the further spread of this virus. Due to lockdown we are helpless and have no choice other than to stay inside our home for the sake of our safety.

As we know that the pandemic caused by coronavirus is spreading worldwide, causing many deaths and infecting people on a large scale. This deadly coronavirus is capable of being transferred from one person to another person through basic social gestures like face to face communication, handshake, or touching an infected surface, etc. So to avoid more infections and deaths, lockdown has been announced in many countries all over the world.

Nowadays, the main concern throughout the whole world is how to stop the spread of viruses? How to cure the affected people when the equipment is less? How to test the infected person out of a big crowd where the testing kits are limited? How to provide basic life-sustaining services to people locked inside their houses? How to regulate the education of students? What about employment? How to collect Funds and regulate the basic operation for poor’s and COVID-19 patients? We can say that this deadly pandemic has put a big question mark on the system of the whole world, but no matter what the level of challenges we are facing these days due to COVID-19 we are blessed to be born in the 21st century, which has witnessed many evolutions and enhancements in science and technology.

If we talk about the role of mobile communication and technology in COVID-19, one thing which we can easily realize is that in this situation also where everything could be nearly impossible, we are able to stand against deadly coronavirus. We are able to regulate our jobs, education, money transfer, shopping, social gathering on phone, and the most important thing is that our learning has not stopped i.e., we are able to utilize our free time in learning various skills like cooking, practicing foreign languages, games, painting, dancing and many more. All these things are possible due to mobile communication and technology.

It is playing a great role not only in making our life sustainable but nearly as before. Can we imagine our life during lockdown shown in figure 2 without mobile and other technologies? What could have happened if time goes two centuries back? We can easily realize that without these technologies it is not possible to fight this war against deadly viruses and might have suffered plenty of casualties. So mobile and technologies are something like life savior during COVID-19. They are helping in regulating basic life functionalities and avoiding the spread of viruses and killing it, it is also helpful in precaution plus cure. Along with India, many other countries are developing various kinds of technologies which are very helpful in this situation like 3D printer to print ventilators for treatment of corona victims, big data for workers, employee, patients, etc., artificial intelligence-based orthopedics securities in health care industries and robots operating many human jobs, etc.

Is that AI Combats COVID19?

It is very important to avoid more spread of infections and deaths. Blue Dot’s is a Canadian startup, it has developed an Artificial Intelligence-based algorithm which analyzes all government news, report, and social media for tracking COVID-19 infections. As shown in above figure 3, it had issued a warning to WHO regarding this pandemic but that time not many people believed that the scenario could become this much dangerous. And people doubted how contextual factors could turn a disease into an outbreak. So data analysis plays an important role in predicting the next levels of the danger our society might face.

Alibaba, the e-commerce giant has developed an artificial intelligence-based system which can detect coronavirus within 20 seconds with 96% accuracy, which takes human a minimum time of 15 minutes. This system processes CT Scans of the patient and gives 96% accurate results. Now over 100 clinics are using this technique as it’s very important to increase the speed of tests for getting cured earlier without staking life at risk. Iran and many other countries are using artificial intelligence images recognition to analyze CT Scans for coronavirus testing.

Does 5G trigger COVID-19?

British ex-footballer David Icke in an interview with London real TV channel claimed a link between 5G and COVID -19 outbreak mentioned in above figure 4, as per his conspiracy theory he revealed the fact that 5G poisons our cells due to electromagnetic fields but this claim is false. He also claimed that the coronavirus breath a new life in 5G wireless service and Wuhan rolled it so just after rolling of 5G service Wuhan witnessed COVID-19 outbreak, but again this claim has been proved wrong because WHO and arm of United Nation successfully identified that 5G did not affect human lives.

The Diagnosis of COVID-19 patients using 5G is already in the news. Chinese doctors have carried out diagnosis of corona patients using 5G technology in China for the very first time. Chengdu, a city in China used 5G technology for diagnosis of corona patients successfully using remote control CT Scanners. As per the doctors, the computer screen shows scans of patients in a hospital over 700 kilometers away via remote diagnosis. A CT Scan and a nucleic acid test are required for this diagnosis.

Even in this situation we are also able to operate each and every basic life functionality with the help of  mobile communication and technologies. We are doing everything we used to do before the pandemic outbreak with the help of phones and technologies. Due to technical support which we are getting through our mobile communication, we are able to live a normal life. Our mobile opens a door to the digital world where we get many important services like education, employment, money transfer, bill payments, purchasing groceries and medicine, game, etc. Our technologies are protecting us from viruses and also helping in the treatment of corona patients.

Reference:

1. World Health Organization (WHO) Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public https://www.who.int/ emergencies/diseases/novelcorona virus – 2019/ advice- for-public2020.
2. Haleem, M. Javaid, Vaishya Effects of COVID 19 pandemic in daily life Curr Med Res Pract (2020), 10.1016/j.cmrp.2020.03.011.
3. Ienca, E. Vayena On the responsible use of digital data to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic Nat Med (2020 Mar 27), pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0832-5.