Corona virus was first detected on December 8 in Wuhan city of Hubei Province in China. But China had not made any real effort to contain the spread of the virus until January 14. China’s initial attempt to defeat the virus was plagued with mismanagement. Nonetheless, China had managed to bring down the new cases of infection within a month or two. Although certain Western critics expressed unhappiness over the way China imposed lockdown, monitored its citizens by infringing their privacy rights, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commended China’s strategy to defeat the highly contagious virus. The purpose of my writing this blog is not to evaluate whether China’s dictatorial way of containing the virus was justifiable or not but how China applied advanced technology to defeat the Corona and how far it has succeeded in that effort.
China heavily relied upon its strong base of advanced technology accompanied with strong law to defeat Corona virus. The technologies worth mentioning here are: AI, Data Science, tracking technology, facial recognition technology, drones, surveillance camera, infrared thermometers, robots, telemedicine, pre-fabricated building materials, digital payment, online shopping, Et al. Let us see how these technologies, which were developed to address various other issues, have been applied to defeat corona.
Advanced algorithm of AI was deployed to analyse data obtained from news reports, social media platform to determine and predict the course, intensity of the Corona outbreak so that the government can take up precautionary measures.
Notwithstanding the criticism from other countries China received over its controversial surveillance system, there’s no denying that China’s surveillance system has significantly contributed in their war against the Corona. Surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology were extensively used to identify, spot those infected patients, who have escaped from isolation wards. The escapees are then quarantined and stopped from further spreading the disease. Surveillance cameras equipped with infrared thermometer were installed at crowded places to detect people with high body temperature, who were then stopped for quarantine. Drones were deployed to monitor people’s activities during and to enforce lockdown, for transportation of medicine and food delivery.
Based on their purchase history, digital payment system was used to identify possible Corona patient and the assumption was confirmed through direct conversation, telemedicine was used to give the patients with mild symptoms access to medical advice to reduce the number of hospital visits.
Robots were deployed to patrol, disinfect certain localities. Field hospitals staffed by robots and enabled by IoT were set up at Hongshan Sports Centre in Wuhan. Patients were examined by 5G connected thermometers to alert the health workers. Patients wore bracelets or rings and the data regarding heartbeat, oxygen level in the blood, body temperature was sent to ClouMind where data was analysed by AI .
Mobile technology was also extensively used to contain the spread of Corona. People were alerted about the movement of Corona infected patients or possible Corona patients nearby through the smartphone app using QR code, also known as ‘close contact detector, ‘jointly developed by Chinese government and companies like Alibaba and Tencent. China made it mandatory to scan the QR code of the color coded health rating system to gain access to shopping mall, offices, etc. Based on the travel and health history, users were assigned red, yellow and green color and officials would then determine who could roam freely and who could not.
The most frightening aspect of Coroan virus is its high contagion rate which resulted in overwhelming existing facilities of healthcare system. Defeating Corona outbreak required hundreds of hospitals, thousands of ventilators to absorb the multiplying number of incoming patients. Lack of which renders patients dead due to unavailability of treatment. To address this issue, China built several hospitals within the span of 10-15 days from the scratch using pre-fabricated building materials.
China’s deployment of advanced technology to protect humankind from highly contagious disease like Covid19 is highly commendable and is an important example to showcase how the existing and new technology can come to humankind’s rescue. There is no denying that China’s containment of Corona outbreak relied heavily on the world’s most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system, which infringes citizens’ privacy rights. It remains to be seen how democratic countries (where the outbreak has reached frightening height but still has to maintain balance between greater public interest and privacy rights) whether those countries will also follow China’s course of action and infringe privacy rights to contain the outbreak.
