How have the tech companies helped in fighting the coronavirus pandemic?

As the coronavirus pandemic accelerates in the whole world, it was complete a face-slap to the technological giants that demands an immediate response.

In today’s world, where technology seemed to be everywhere and take us to unthinkable places and push the limits of reality, the coronavirus pandemic reminded us how small and vulnerable we are

As we all know, the virus put us all into isolation and demanded that we avoid human contact. So, companies, public organizations, and hospitals needed new ways to conduct themselves.

So, let’s make a little review of how this virus is transforming the IT sector around the world.

Tracking apps

Certain countries, such as South Korea and Hong Kong, are using tracking apps to collect data of infected patients to track their movements, mark red zones, and avoid spread.

How do they work? Basically, when a case is confirmed, all the places the infected individual went in the last few days are marked as potential danger zones, meaning that people should avoid going there. Such a strategy has worked wonders in some of these countries, which are considered by experts to be the ones that have managed the pandemic in the best way possible.

Big Data

The big data race was unparalleled. Now, its growth and development are indispensable. Sequencing and visualization of the evolution of the spread are of utmost importance for epidemiologists so they can have a better understanding of how the disease spreads and how it behaves in every country. For example, Nextrain, an open-sourced project providing data of the virus, has studied and shared the genetic sequencing of around 700 patients with the virus. This has corroborated that the virus isn’t mutating as it spreads through the spread.

AbCellera, a biotechnology company, is using a machine learning model to find therapies analyzing the antibodies from recovered patients. Likewise, they are studying around five million immune cells while searching for the one that produces antibodies that help infected patients. In this way, 500 antibodies have been found as potential candidates to be used in therapies of the virus. The support of machine learning algorithms speeds up the process of finding possible treatments to be tested.

3D Ventilator Printing

Ventilators are essential to treat the worst cases of COVID-19. In some places where the crisis has been terrible, such as Italy, there’s a significant shortage, meaning doctors choose who they give the ventilator to, and who to, basically, let die without a ventilator.

However, some companies are trying to deal with this shortage through 3D printing through open-source design to manufacturing them. Anyone with a 3D printer can collaborate and take them to healthcare providers. In fact, in Spain, that has been one of the countries where the coronavirus has collapsed the healthcare system, Resistencia Team did so. They build an open-source prototype, which was successfully tested in Asturia, Northern Spain, and is soon to be tested in humans.