Combating the coronavirus with Twitter, data mining, and machine learning

The coronavirus illness (nCoV) is now an international public health emergency, bigger than the SARS outbreak of 2003. Unlike SARS, this time around scientists have better genome sequencing, machine learning, and predictive analysis tools to understand and monitor the outbreak. During the SARS outbreak, it took five months for scientists to sequence the virus's genome. However, the first 2019-nCoV case was reported in December, and scientists had the genome sequenced by January 10, only a month later. Researchers have been using mapping tools to track the spread of disease for several years.