Anirban Mahapatra’s COVID-19 is a meticulous dive into the pandemic that changed the 21st century world. In this excerpt, he delves into what the future could look like, and what kind of a situation we’re likely to have on our hands in the near future:
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Envisioning what the future holds in store is like imagining what dry land is like while in a storm in the middle of the ocean. Even in the best of times, predicting the future is a risky enterprise. A devastating pandemic of this scale and severity imposes additional challenges because we have no reference point in the modern era for something like this. Off-the-cuff comments may be forgotten but writing tends to stick around and haunt the writer. If you’re too certain with your pronouncements, you’re almost certain to be wrong. If you’re too vague, no one will read what you have to say.
We are only coming to terms with the direct fallout of the pandemic, but what will be the ramifications for long-term health and planning? What will be the implications for travel, for immigration and for commerce? Will countries continue to look inward once the pandemic is over?
Certain aspects of human life and society have changed due to the immediate effects of the pandemic. It is possible, therefore, to make short-term predictions. What will happen five, ten, or fifteen years down the road because of the ongoing, cataclysmic event and our responses to it are more difficult to say.
Will there be more public interest in interest in infectious diseases and medicine? Will it become a field that attracts more of the brightest minds as engineering, information technology, finance and business management have in preceding decades? Will physicians take up more active roles in framing public policy? Will economists stress-test catastrophic economic events of this nature?
Human societies are designed to maximize connections. Over the course of a day, most of us have dozens of close interactions with other people. The design of cities, buildings, jobs, transportation and commerce keeps the human need for connection in mind more than the rare threat of a disease that spreads by human-to- human interaction.
COVID-19||Anirban Mahapatra
What can we say looking at the past? Based on a study of the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1918, the historian Nancy Bristow writes, ‘If history is any guide, not much will change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.’4 Yet, it is impossible to use history as guide, because the world has changed immensely in a century. In 1918, viruses had not been characterized. Colonial powers ruled the world and were in the middle of World War I. Commercial airline travel was non-existent. There was no Internet to allow the lay public to read research articles immediately and view daily statistics on illness and death.
… We can assume that the pandemic will irrevocably change some business practices. There will be more people working from home permanently and less business travel to meet clients and for conferences. Technological solutions that were embraced perhaps with a bit of trepidation during the pandemic will become wider habits.
Distancing is challenging in factories, warehouses, prisons, airplanes, dormitories and ships where space is maximized. Due to a premium being put on space in cities and the density of population, buildings have grown vertically. Property values have risen globally since the Great Recession. Gentrification had led to a return to economically disadvantaged areas. It is possible that there will be a reshaping of how urban spaces are used, with more people now moving outward instead of flocking to New York, Mumbai or London. But the experience of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tokyo in the first year of the pandemic has demonstrated that even within densely populated cities, measures can be taken to keep infections low. There may be a reshaping of urban societies, but it is still too early to tell. People tend to go where there are economic opportunities.
More broadly, will humans finally address the pressing problems of the day which the pandemic brought into stark relief?
Problems of inequality, poor access to healthcare and economic opportunities, and lack of equal rights are prevalent globally.
The pandemic allows humans to face difficult challenges that we have been ignoring, instead of denying or downplaying them. It gives us a chance to reframe priorities and reimagine society.
As humans we tend to focus on immediate problems. Our ancestors were good at hiding from tigers and other dangerous animals, finding caves to sleep in when it was raining, and building a fire when it was cold. Longer-term planning for problems does not come easily. This is applicable to both people individually and to us as a species.
… We keep asking ourselves, ‘When will the pandemic end?’ But we can’t mark the end as the date when it is over only for those of us who are privileged. We know that the biological pandemic will end one day. What we must also ensure is that there is an end to the social one.
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COVID-19 is an excellent and insightful read. Anyone can read this book, and everyone should read this book.
COVID-19 has impacted individual lives and collective communities, making it more urgent than ever to rethink the way our economy runs and the aspects it chooses to focus on. The macroeconomic aspects set the stage for microeconomics, since the latter can be geared according to the former. But macroeconomics can be counter-intuitive and needs to be understood before the other aspects of the economy can be discussed. This is also true in the context of a lockdown. In his book Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis, Arun Kumar bases his analysis of macroeconomics on the understanding of what happens to variables like incomes, investments, savings, exports, imports and the growth rate of the economy.
In India, the lockdown was substantially loosened June onwards; given the state and spread of the virus in the country, this relaxation came at a time when the pandemic was not brought sufficiently under control. The number of tests was also far below the adequate or ideal number. While some countries have completely controlled the pandemic, it is still unlikely that it will be brought under control globally anytime soon. The economies of different countries have also been affected in different ways under their prospective lockdowns. China was initially reported to have ramped up production after the lockdown ended. In the first quarter of 2020, the rate of growth of the Chinese economy slipped from about +6 per cent in the previous quarter to -6.8 per cent. But the brutal lockdown in the Hubei province ensured that the country could overcome the virus faster. This also ensured the lockdown could be relaxed quickly in the country. As a result, in the second quarter, the economy recovered to +3.2 per cent growth.
Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis||Arun Kumar
According to Arun Kumar, the situation around the world now is actually worse than it was during the depression of the 1930s or during the world wars. A major difference between a situation of war or recession and that of a pandemic is that during wars or recession, while aspects of the economy might be affected adversely in significant ways, production does not stop. This however is not the case during a pandemic. In a lockdown, production cannot take place, so both supply and demand collapse.
Simultaneously, workers get laid off and their incomes fall, and most businesses close down and their profits fall and even turn into losses. The result is that a large number of people lose their incomes and, therefore, demand falls drastically. This is a unique situation and past experiences of dealing with crises have not been useful in predicting what will happen in the future and how one should deal with the present situation. Therefore, according to Kumar, we need a new understanding of and strategy for the macroeconomics of the nation. The macro-variables—output, employment, prices, savings, investments and foreign trade—need to be reformulated and studied in the light of the changed situation.
In such a situation, the economy goes through three stages. From the normal phase, it declines during a lockdown, but even with the easing of lockdown restrictions, it is unlikely that the economy will immediately bounce back to the pre-pandemic phase. Due to continued wage cuts and unemployment, demand is likely to remain low. Many sectors of production will suffer and take long to revive, businesses will fail and the cost of doing business will rise. It is important that India learns from the trajectory of the economies of China and the US. The Indian economy, like the US and Chinese ones, is likely to recover slowly, especially due to its large unorganized sector which has taken a massive hit despite being at the helm of services which can easily be consider essential.
It remains to be seen how recovery and rehabilitation takes place in India, what the role of private businesses will be, and how the government will handle the new few years, which would end up becoming crucial in defining the trajectory of the country in the near future.
‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ says Sonu Sood, quoting John F. Kennedy, as he explains what propelled him to undertake the colossal challenge of helping thousands of migrants get safely to their homes as India reeled with COVID-19.
From taking to the streets and reaching out to the stranded, to setting up a dedicated team and making arrangements for national and international transport, Sonu managed to help thousands of helpless and needy workers. Chartered flights, buses and trains were sanitized and paid for. Distress calls from all over the world were answered.
Here are a few instances from Sonu’s memoir, I am No Messiah that remind us of the beauty of compassion, humanity and the power of one man’s determination to give succour to those in need.
The time when 167 women stranded in Ernakulam, Kerala, were rescued and sent to Odisha –
The women worked in an embroidery workshop. ‘The factory had closed soon after the lockdown was imposed in Kerala, leaving these Odia workers high and dry. The women had no shelter and hardly any food in Kerala. They also barely knew Malayalam, the state’s language. In short, they were cash-strapped and helpless.’
Explaining the logistics involved, Sonu Sood writes, ‘… I first reached out to some authorities at Air Asia. Once they were convinced about the immediacy and the integrity of my request, they agreed to send an aircraft from Bengaluru to Kochi to airlift the girls and take them to Bhubaneswar. In Kerala, we had to arrange for a minimum of seven large buses to fetch the 167 women from Ernakulam and drop them off at the Kochi airport in time to catch the flight.’
The setting up of the Ilaaj India app –
Ilaaj India is a mobile based application to connect people seeking medical help with those equipped to provide it to them.
‘Ilaaj India aims to get the patient the best possible help in the shortest possible time and at the closest possible venue. We strive to get the surgeries or procedures done at hospitals easily accessible to patients. But we can also make arrangements to get them treated in bigger metros like Mumbai or Delhi, depending on the immediacy and the kind of time the patient has.’
I am No Messiah || Sonu Sood
‘For me, Ilaaj India was born when I learnt of the magnitude of the health-care problem that afflicts thousands of Indians. The figures shook me: an unbelievable number of children died due to inadequate medical attention in 2019.’
The quote that best describes Sonu’s effort to better the healthcare facilities in the country is from the book itself where he cites Mahatma Gandhi – ‘The best way to find oneself is to lose oneself in the service of others.’
The ‘Ghar Bhejo’ operation turns international
‘In July 2020, when parents of over a hundred kids beseeched me to airlift their children from Moscow and ferry them to Chennai, I was caught off balance. Chennai was under complete lockdown, there were no flights going in or flying out. It was an insurmountable difficulty because when a state is under lockdown, you can’t procure landing permissions. But the parents were desperate.’
‘On 5 August, they did land in Chennai, all the way from Moscow. I had managed to get last-minute permissions from the authorities in Moscow and Chennai to facilitate this journey of the medical students.’
The beginning of a long journey ahead
Reflecting on his incessant efforts to help those in need, Sood notes ‘It is no longer just about Ghar Bhejo, for getting a migrant home doesn’t mean the end of the journey; it is the beginning of a whole new set of problems. And service to mankind doesn’t begin and end with migrant workers; there are scores of other people too who need help. When you spread your arms to embrace people, you realize that a sea of humanity awaits.’
On a concluding note, we would like to recall these words by Sood that form the core of his life’s philosophy – ‘There isn’t a moment when something doesn’t touch your heart, confirming that by stepping forward to help, you’re doing something right. As I said earlier, one lifetime isn’t enough for what I want to do. But I do know that this lifetime has been earmarked for a dream.’
Five ways in which And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again takes inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy
In this rich, eye-opening anthology, And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again , dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists and translators from more than thirty countries offer a profound, kaleidoscopic portrait of lives transformed by the coronavirus pandemic.
As COVID-19 has become the defining global experience of our time, writers transcend borders and genres to offer a powerful antidote to the fearful confines of isolation: a window onto corners of the world beyond our own.
The anthology harks back to one of the most famous works of ‘pandemic literature’ Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, especially the first part, the Inferno. Read on to learn more about the fascinating intertextuality of And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again
Just as Virgil in the Divine Comedy is the voice of both compassion, empathy and reason, thinkers, artists and authors are the ones we turn to for guidance and answers in difficult times.
The perspectives of scientists are indispensable, but we must also listen to philosophers, anthropologists, intellectuals, artists, and creators. . . Literature also experiences an inevitable renaissance in these times of collective fear: when we cannot understand what is happening around us, as a society we turn to books to see if they offer any answers.
Pandemics seem to not only inspire creativity, but also a need within readers to seek meaningful insights into the more metaphysical aspects of illness, of death and the afterlife. Just as the first part of the Divine Comedy was written during the Black Death-the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century, it’s the Covid 19 pandemic that serves as the unlikely muse for this anthology.
Or, like religion tells us, is there a mythical divide between heaven for the good and hell for the bad, with our final destination decided by a whimsical god? Perhaps there is a different kind of afterlife altogether, one that remains undiscovered by philosophers, theologists, and scientists? The plague brings these questions to the fore, which in normal times are confined to the depths
of the human psyche, making them essential to the present moment.
Some of the most iconic lines from the Divine Comedy serve to structure the anthology, as the titles of the five parts into which the fifty-two contributions are divided.
Part I, “A Mighty Flame Follows a Tiny Spark,” focuses on the eruption of the plague; Part II, “The Path to Paradise Begins in Hell,” on the need for a road map; Part III, “I’m Not Alone in Misery,” on empathy; Part IV, “Faith Is the Substance of Things Hoped for,” on hope; and Part V, “Love Insists the Loved Loves Back,” is the door through which we might come outside again and see the stars.
The pandemic itself seems to be an evocation of the seven circles of hell described in the Inferno, growing increasingly more frightening with progression
I’m afraid for myself and my family. I see lines in stores and people quarreling over basic goods at the cash registers. I see an administration that’s taking advantage of the opportunity and dismantling democracy even further. And big companies, untouchable in all this, who will soon be able to make all of us even more dependent on them. I see borders closing, the police using excessive force, and cruel looks from people on the streets.
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With its notes of positivity amidst the turmoil, the title of the anthology is inspired by the last line of Dante’s Inferno, in which the poet and Virgil emerge from their journey through hell to once again view the beauty of the heavens—‘Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.’
The day after the plague it will be summer, and finally we’ll be able to have a coffee at the corner cafe, go to the beach, and for a brief moment we’ll value our restored liberty.
A rich, eye-opening anthology, And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again , dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists and translators from more than thirty countries offer a profound, kaleidoscopic portrait of lives transformed by the coronavirus pandemic.
As COVID-19 has become the defining global experience of our time, writers transcend borders and genres to offer a powerful antidote to the fearful confines of isolation: a window onto corners of the world beyond our own.
UNPRECEDENTED was the ubiquitous term first used to describe the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the world in 2020, as if the event were unlike any other. The truth is that it has been rather routine in its procedure, part of the eternal cycles of nature. Even in the Bible, similar disasters—earthquakes, deluges, famines, plagues of insects, pestilence of livestock, boils, thunderstorms of hail and fire—are recurrent visitors in the theater of human affairs. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that newcalamities such as this one aren’t extraordinary.
It isn’t surprising that the official approach to the pandemic was initially forensic, with an insistence on numbers: how many deaths and infections per day in a given hospital of a given city in a given country, how long a possible vaccine could take to bring us all out of purgatory, and so on, as if suffering could be quantified, ignoring that each and every person lost was unique and irreplaceable. The Talmud says that death is a kind of sleep and that one person’s sleep is unknowable to others. Although the misfortune arrived at a time when the essential tenets of globalism were being questioned—tariffs imposed, borders closed,immigrants seen with suspicion—the pandemic was planetary, hitting wherever people did what people do. It preyed with distinct fury on the poor and vulnerable, as natural catastrophes always do, especially in countries ruled by tyrants responding with disdain and hubris. Inevitably, the lockdown also forced a new method to everything everywhere. The sound of the kitchen clock suddenly felt new, the warmth of a handshake, the taste of fresh soup. As an antidote to numbers, it was once again left to writers to notice those changes, to chronicle them by interweaving words. That’s what literature does well: it champions nuance while resisting the easy tricks of generalization. This international anthology includes over fifty of those writers representing thirty-five countries and arriving in about a dozen languages. Cumulatively, their accounts are proof of the degree to which COVID-19 brought about the collapse of a hierarchy of principles we had all embraced until then. Call it the end of an era Shenaz Patel, from Mauritius, for instance, realizes that “suddenly, like an octopus disturbed in its sleep, everything kept hidden under the placid surface latched onto us with its many arms and spit its ink into our faces.” She adds: “We are faced with a true ‘civil war’ of speech, echoing through radios and social media, between those who respect the lockdown and those who don’t; those who understand and the ‘cocovids,’ the empty heads who go out anyway; between the ‘true patriots’ and the selfish few who knowingly put others in danger.”
Written by Dr Swapneil Parikh, Maherra Desai and Dr Rajesh Parikh, The Coronavirus is an immense resource that comes to us at a time when accuracy of information is just as immediate and necessary as sound medical infrastructure. Dedicated to the health professionals who have been risking their lives at the frontlines of this erratic pandemic, the book dissects the disease from every possible angle in the most accessible and comprehensive way, and is a must-read for anyone trying to understand the past, present and possible future of not only the Coronavirus itself but the turning of the world at large. We bring you a few of the many predictions and speculations the authors get absolutely right.
The Coronavirus||Dr Swapneil Parikh, Maherra Desai, Dr Rajesh Parikh
As China lifted its restrictions, many feared the virus would spread again.
So it has. China confirmed around 1300 new cases mostly from Wuhan, Jilin and Shulan. Mid-May onwards, Wuhan managed to test every single person in its 11 million population over a ten-day period.
There is fear that cases are going undetected in some countries, especially those with weak healthcare systems. In an interview in July, Professor Brahmar Mukherjee, a leading epidemiologist, said India possibly had 30 million undetected COVID-19 cases at that time, going up to a 100 million in just six weeks.
Researching flight data of outward-bound flights from Wuhan for January 2020, many models predict that the virus should have had a wider spread than reported in many countries.
This has been confirmed. medRxiv has shown that the passengers travelling outside China two weeks before Wuhan’s lockdown were headed for Asia, Europe, the US and Australia, all of which showed unprecedented jumps in confirmed cases in the months that followed.
Information coming from China about COVID-19 related statistics has been under scrutiny for tampering. In fact, when the US started to investigate the accuracy of the Chinese data, China immediately announced an additional 1300 fatalities due to COVID-19 that had been misreported earlier. This translated to a 50% increase in total number of deaths reported from Wuhan. The authors of the book ask if China was simply sanitizing its narrative rather than doing due diligence. Turns out, it was the former.
In India, some experts continued to claim there was no community transmission, facetiously portraying the low number of confirmed daily cases as a low number of daily new infections. With few daily tests, the writers suspect that India had far more daily new infections than new daily confirmed cases. Despite the government repeatedly denying community transmission in India, the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on July 17 confirmed that there were cases of community transmission in Kerala. In fact, when on July 19 the Indian Medical Association confirmed community transmission in the country, Dr Arvind Kumar, Chairman of the Centre for Chest Surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said that this mode of transmission had been rampant in the country for quite some time.
Many countries may already have more cases than South Korea, but unless testing is significantly scaled up, several new cases will go undetected. This was proven true to the letter in India, US, Russia, Brazil, countries that soon surpassed every other nation after a surge of cases.
The book predicted that by mid-April, there will be thousands of COVID-19 cases detected in India, and several thousand more will go undetected.
By mid-April, India had indeed crossed the 1000 mark of COVID-19 cases. On April 13, there were 1243 new cases and the 7-day average had hit 811.
Perhaps human social contact patterns will change drastically with changing weather (unlikely), or an unprecedented successful social distancing strategy might be implemented (possible) or the virus itself could change for better or worse (possible). Any or all of these factors could affect the eventual number infected and dead. The movement of the pandemic and related statistics has unfolded as predicted. With increased testing, the number of active cases has also increased because there is more extensive documentation of cases.
The writers of The Coronavirus wrote that millions of tests worldwide are needed, and we must prepare for an eventuality where we need billions. This has now been acknowledged by both WHO & CDC.
The book also states that the pandemic is far from over in China which was successful at disrupting transmission by essentially shutting down the country and economy. Beijing saw a recurrence as late as June 11, 2020 where a 52-year-old man tested positive for the virus.
It is important to state that containment and mitigation are not mutually exclusive; we must do both, but somecontainment strategies are devastating to the world economy and stigmatize the sick. While we must continue containment strategies that are effective, we must aggressively try to mitigate the destruction that COVID-19 leaves in its wake. Many countries have adopted policies that are more tempered, attempting to strike a balance between restricting inessential movement and safely opening up the sectors which impact the economy greatly.
The book calls for a readiness to significantly change our daily lives. With a surge in cases, various countries including India are implementing drastic social distancing measures, including closure of schools, cancellation of mass gatherings, work from home, voluntary home isolation for mild cases and aggressive exposure avoidance for high-risk individuals. Our lives have become compartmentalised into ‘pre-pandemic’ and ‘post-pandemic’. In fact, it is becoming increasingly unclear if we will ever fully return to the former.
The strategies come at a huge cost. The economic, social, developmental and mental health cost must be justified by aggressive increases in testing, tracing and treatment capacities. Social distancing strategies are never meant to be permanent; they can buy us a few weeks or months to scale up our health infrastructure. We need to use that time wisely.
This is also a widely adopted and acknowledged strategy now, with more investments being made in testing kits and ventilators.
A pandemic cannot be stopped by spending billions in North America and just a few millions in Africa. A pandemic does not respect geographical boundaries or military arsenals. There needs to be an agreement between the private sector and governments of the world that during a pandemic, medical supplies will go not to the highest bidder but will be distributed strategically to save lives. A Californian company is now using drones to deliver medical supplies in Rwanda and Ghana, a delivery strategy that was also used in China and Chile. India has also sent medical supplies to 13 African nations.
Infections that spread via droplets are strictly speaking not airborne but can be said to be borne by air. Some nuance can be lost in the oversimplified false dichotomy of airborne versus droplet transmission; they are not mutually exclusive. The book cited the 1934 paper on the Wells evaporation-falling curve and postulated airborne transmission long before the paper was revisited and then widely accepted.
The book states thatjust one sick passenger can cause an outbreak all over the world. “If a sick passenger coughed or sneezed on his hands, the virus would get deposited onto his hands. If he took out a magazine during the flight, the infectious viruses would rub off onto the magazine, and the magazine becomes a ‘fomite’”. Having now been proved as a fact, extensive measures and restrictions have been implemented regarding travel, especially air travel.
The increase in infections isn’t because of a change in the virus but because of a change in human behaviour. While the book anticipated this, it is now a fact accepted by all including ICMR. Recognizing the impact of human behaviour on the pandemic, news outlets have criticised gathering, inessential travel and hoarding essentials among other things. Instances like ‘COVID parties’ in the US have been severely disparaged because they end up creating coronavirus hotspots. The Outbreak Communications Planning Guide by the (WHO) states that behaviour changes can reduce the spread by as much as 80%.
However, with a new virus like SARS-CoV-2 the weather is unlikely to significantly affect transmission because the entire human population is susceptible. Across the globe, various regions experience different seasons and temperatures at one point in time. A steady increase in infected cases globally dampens hope that the weather will affect transmission.
No correlation has been established between seasonal conditions and transmission. Initial claims that tropical regions would withstand the spread better have been voided as the virus has seen an exponential surge over the hottest months in India.
What is so special about children that they seem protected? Maybe children are just healthier because they get good nutrition, plenty of exercise, regenerate better and have been exposed to lower cumulative doses of environmental pollution. Children are far less likely to smoke or to have diseases like diabetes, and their lungs have much less background inflammation. Research has indicated that children have less ACE2 and these levels increase with ageing. A child’s angiotensin system might be immature and therefore less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Acquired data from antibody blood tests suggests that children under the age of 12 in particular are less likely to catch the virus than adults. Scientists are also positive that children are more likely to remain asymptomatic.
Coronaviruses can also cause Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE). High concentrations of antibodies prevented SARS-CoV from infecting the cells but low concentrations of antibodies caused ADE. This has been found to be the case for COVID-19.
It is possible that varying levels of antibodies against common cold coronaviruses may be causing ADE of SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the evidence of this so far borders on speculation. High concentrations of partially cross-reactive antibodies in children may overwhelm the virus and neutralize it but low antibody levels in the elderly may cause ADE and severe infection. This was verified for COVID-19.
When the Th1 and Th2 cells are in balance, the immune system functions properly. However, when there is an imbalance between these cells, the immune system may either be predisposed to severe infections or it may attack its own tissues. Research found it true for COVID-19.
RT-LAMP (Reverse Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification) test, which is faster and easier to perform, has been combined with CRISPR, an innovation that can make it simpler, cheaper and quicker to test. The testing process can be done with minimal training and this offers tremendous promise for low resource settings. RT-LAMP based COVID-19 diagnostic kits are in use, and Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said that the test is quick, accurate and cost effective that has very low and easily manageable infrastructural needs and does not require any special expertise.
Antigen tests are rapid tests that give results in minutes. While these tests hold promise because of their low cost, quick results and simplicity, in the past similar tests have not been very sensitive. Nevertheless, there are several such tests in research and development for SARS-CoV-2 and if scientists perfect this technology, they could be combined with rapid antibody tests. These combined rapid tests, if accurate, would be powerful tools in the pandemic. This claim has also materialised. The developed rapid test kits are easy to use, can test patients with and without symptoms, and most importantly can be deployed in COVID hotspots.
A study published in The Lancet used mathematical predictive models to test the preparedness and vulnerability of developing nations, especially African countries. Considering strong economic ties between China and many African nations, and the flight data available for travel following the outbreak and before the lockdown in China, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa had the highest chances of acquiring COVID-19, with a moderate to high capacity to manage the outbreak. This was also proved to the very last detail. In March, out of the 1300 confirmed coronavirus cases in the African continent, Egypt, South Africa and Algeria alone accounted for over 58% of the cases.
While it is premature to gauge to what extent AI will affect the COVID-19 outbreak, AI will probably play a role in containing this outbreak and even more so in future outbreaks. In fact, Artificial Intelligence start-ups like Closedloop, Clevy.io and Mantle Labs have been extremely active in identifying the virus and communicating related information.
