Experimenting digital response to the outbreak of COVID-19?

Governments across the globe are gradually developing the digital infrastructure and engineering capabilities to face the pandemic and alleviate the spread of COVID-19 through community-driven contact-tracing technologies.

Hyderabad: World Health Organisation on Wednesday said that this week brought a number of disturbing milestones in terms of COVID-19 confirmed cases and it inevitably is a call for unity, resolve and collaboration across the globe.

The research on the other hand shows that our digital infrastructure needs strengthening to deal with the impact of COVID-19 and future public health crisis. Analysis of big data relating to citizens' movement, disease transmission patterns and health monitoring could be used to aid prevention measures of the pandemic.

While, in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing three major occurrences across the globe. A wider acceptance of online services, humongous requirement for internet services for conventional industries and boosted connectivity among diverse types of industries.

According to reports, these three data streams provide important, real-time data about travel patterns that spread disease and longitudinal alterations in populations at risk, which until recently have been very difficult to quantify on schedules related to a fast-moving pandemic.

With an exponential rise in mobility and growing global connectivity, this information will be critical to planning surveillance and containment strategies.

Some researchers and private entities along with their respective state governments are developing a digital platform, HealthMap, which visually represents the disease outbreaks according to location, time and the type of contagious virus, bacterial disease that is being carried while entering into the city.

More than 180 countries and territories have confirmed a case of coronavirus, and the number of cases worldwide has reached more than 870,000. Like a massive storm front, the crisis threatens not only to overwhelm health-care systems but also to collide in unpredictable ways with childcare, education, employment, and transportation.