Harnessing the Power of Blockchains and Machine Learning to End the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The last catastrophic pandemic the world has seen was the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, considering that it happened 102 years ago, one can perhaps leverage the technologic advancements over the past century to combat the current pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (COVID-19), which has already infected more than 16 million people globally and shut down the majority of the daily activities of life. The danger and challenge of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 lies in their highly contagious nature, spreading like wildfire with the potential to infect the majority of the world’s population unless drastic measures are undertaken. In some countries, the social distancing and quarantine measures are either insufficient or ineffective as the number of cases is still on the rise. A major issue causing this rise is that most COVID-19 carriers appear asymptomatic. Identifying infected individuals as well as healthy/immune ones is the most crucial step in halting the disease spread. This is where the role of mass screening comes in.