How CHINA vanquished the Coronavirus using AI

1000's ⇰ 100's ⇰ 10's

China was the origin of the novel coronavirus spread.

 In the Chinese territories, it infected around 80,000 people and killed more than 3,000.

 In the beginning, the outbreak was massive, but in recent weeks, they managed to contain it. For a country, the size of China with 1.4 billion inhabitants, reporting 50 cases a day is just a drop in the ocean.

So, through this blog I wanted to to illustrate how China is managing to win the war against COVID-19 using advanced technologies.

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China is known for harvesting massive amounts of data from its citizens.

They have a network of more than 200 million video surveillance cameras 

distributed around the country.

 Apart from these, they also installed bio-metric scanners in the doorway of apartments. When a person decides to leave his apartment, he has to scan his face as a sort of registration. From then on, the Intelligent System processing the data knows that the person is outside and can track his whereabouts via video surveillance system.

 Central databases stores all of this information, machine learning algorithms then crunch the data and calculates the potential social interactions of the person.

The central database also gathers data from additional sources. One of these is the WeChat app which is used by about 1 billion people monthly just in China. The app conveniently combines localisation, social media, chats and e-wallets into one system.

So how does this benefits in controlling COVID-19. Lets check

First Advantage:

The payments occur using contactless virtual cards and without exchanging real money. Thus, this lack of physical exchange automatically reduces the dissemination of the virus.

Second Advantage:

The localisation feature which provides accurate location of the individual.

 Whereas the surveillance cameras have a limited reach, the location provided by WeChat will give the system precise information regarding the whereabouts of the person.

 If a person comes in close contact with someone infected with the virus, the system can immediately alert him and get him to avoid that person.

Third Advantage:

Since the e-wallet includes information about shops visited together with the purchases, the two can be combined.

 From the location of the shop, once can deduce if a person shopping might have contracted the virus because a few minutes earlier, an infected person was shopping in that same shop.

 The purchases, on the other hand, might provide information regarding the wellbeing of the individual. An Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can easily infer that if certain items are purchased, then the person or someone close to him is most probably ill. 

The chats on WeChat further corroborate this hypothesis since they are automatically analysed using the AI.

 The system then flags the person as a potential case, and a medical team visits him to perform specific tests.

Fourth Advantage:

 Using the social media element which is essential to identify the social circle of the person and reach to them in case of an infection.

The system is so sophisticated that it can list most of the people who interacted with an infected person in the previous two weeks.

The government then imposes self-quarantine for at least fourteen days on these people.

Every citizen also gets an automatic Health code which can be either; red, amber or green. This coding determines the mobility of the person.

A green colour means that the person is free to roam unrestricted. 

People who just returned from abroad or might have been in contact with an infected person have a yellow code, and their movement is restricted.

 Those who are probably infected fall under the red category and they have to stay in quarantine.

Thus, the main motto is clear that the Chinese government willing to identify hotspots before they get out of control.For sure, it is the highest tech epidemic control ever created in the history of the world. The system is considered by many as unconventional and verging on the extreme, but it seems to be giving good results.

 Thus we have to ask ourselves what extent we are ready to go, to save further lives

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