Right now during the global pandemic, the awful choice seems to be between saving lives or saving livelihoods. The authors -- one a roboticist and AI researcher, one a public health researcher and physician -- believe it's imperative to create a massive investment in data, analytics, and computing power to combat the virus. Their call for a plan begins with the rapid deployment of testing infrastructure and supplies for frontline workers. This buys the time to start putting technology solutions in place. Those technology solutions include smart, privacy-respecting contact analysis through data in positive patients.

The best thing most of us can do to fight COVID-19 is stay home, to curb the respiratory disease's spread. But anyone with a computer can pitch in more actively too: by helping scientists design drugs to combat the virus now responsible for hundreds of thousands of infections worldwide. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator David Baker creates new proteins tailor-made for specific tasks. Now, his team at the University of Washington is hunting for proteins that might stop the novel coronavirus (called SARS-CoV-2) from infecting human cells -- and they're enlisting citizen scientists to help via a free computer game called Foldit. Foldit players around the world compete to solve protein puzzles digitally, designing molecules with certain specs.

As COVID-19 reaches more than 60 countries with global cases topping 95,500 and the number of death tolls crossing 3,000, the whole world is doing their best to avoid the catastrophe. While organisations like WHO and UN are releasing funds to facilitate research, many are looking towards AI to decelerate the crisis. The scientific communities across the world have galvanised to find a 21st-century solution to a 21st-century problem. Let's take a look at how AI is being used to contain the latest outbreak: DeepMind today have announced that they are releasing structure predictions of several proteins that can promote research into the ongoing research around COVID-19. They have used the latest version of AlphaFold system to find these structures.