The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on track to be the largest ever. In fact, the ongoing outbreak in Africa is among the most concerning epidemics the organization trying to tame it has ever seen. "Other than Covid, which affected the whole world, this is the thing that has frightened me the most," says Nicole Lurie, who has worked for Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations since 2017 and now serves as executive director for preparedness and response and the US director. More than 7,000 people have contracted the Bundibugyo Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo since May, around half of whom have died, according to government data compiled by the World Health Organization. "This is the most rapidly growing Ebola outbreak that we've seen. It's probably on pace to be the worst the world has ever seen," Lurie tells WIRED, "and it's quite terrifying."

The coronavirus was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization on January 30. AI is being employed extensively to track the spread of the new deadly virus, for now dubbed the 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Receiving fair attention as a result is BlueDot, a venture-backed startup that has built an AI platform to process billions of pieces of data, such as from world air travel, to identify outbreaks. BlueDot issued its first alert on Dec. 31, ahead of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued its own warning on Jan. 6, according to an account in Forbes. BlueDot was founded by Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician and professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto.