In the hugely popular book 'Homo Deus' written in 2015, Author Yuval Noah Harari hails humankind’s success in eradicating one of the biggest problems that the earlier generations had to battle with: plagues. “Of course these problems haven’t been completely solved,” he says, but they have been reduced from “incomprehensible and uncontrollable force of nature into manageable challenges.”

Most of you would agree that the current pandemic situation belies Harari's claim, for the seemingly indomitable human spirit of the 21st century seems to be crumbling in the wake of the deadly coronavirus. But as we look deeper to examine, more closely, the promise of AI, there is a silver lining to be found. AI is no silver bullet, of course, but it is helping us make some progress in overcoming the havoc wreaked by the virus. The victories are incremental but, in this time of despair, it might be helpful to celebrate even the smallest of gains. Here’s a relook at some of the recent advances in using AI for accelerating COVID-19 response.

India's first AI-enabled COVID19 testing facility commences operations in IGI New Delhi: Owned by Delhi-based AI company Thalamus Irvine, the AI-powered facility is driven by computer vision and a paper-free backend for processing mass volumes of international passengers. Passengers of an entire international flight can be tested using the scalable node architecture and complete digital systems or patient entry, AI driven process improvement and SoP management. Read more...

AI investigates which animals can be the new coronavirus hosts: A group of scientists from the Univerity of Liverpool have enabled machine learning technology to understand and prevent new forms of coronaviruses from spreading by understanding which animals could be the next hosts for the virus's new forms. They have used ML to identify the animals through three different yet complementary perspectives - viral, mammal and network. This bifurcation allowed the scientists to segregate high-risk species to keep a lookout for coronavirus spread. Read more...

Nagpur to use facial recognition to track COVID19 patients: As Maharashtra deals with the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic, the Nagpur administration has decided to deploy facial recognition technology to track COVID-19 positive patients' as part of the measures such as movement restrictions and curfew in containment zones. The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has announced that they will launch facial recognition by 3,800 CCTVs that are installed across the city. This step has earned the city the distinction of being the first city to deploy the technology to arrest the increase of COVID infections. Read more...

AI in vaccine and drug discovery for COVID-19: A definite Boon: With deep learning, researchers can extract features from raw data. ML has a significant contribution in areas of drugs and vaccine discoveries. With large volumes of data and automatic abstract feature learning, ML is set to make a mark in various application areas. AI and ML are involved in creating models that recognize patterns and learn from the available data to draw inferences. These inferences can also be drawn from previously available data. Read more...

How AI-powered analytics can curb black-marketing of COVID-19 drugs: Amidst the raging coronavirus crisis, accounts of family members struggling to find life-saving drugs are being reported all across India. Across the world, there are cases being reported of theft of vaccines, either for a loved one or to be sold on the black market. Flowlytics is an advanced analytics solution by the American company Invistics that can track drug diversion, and therefore, the black marketing of critical drugs and vaccines. Read more...

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels