COVID-nineteen — more commonly known equally the coronavirus — has unleashed massive shock waves amongst the worldwide wellness, science, government and business organisation communities as societies are trying to contain the virus. At the moment, the scale and velocity at which the coronavirus is spreading are proving difficult to manage because the regional clustering of the outbreak has moved across the initial Hubei province of Mainland china to Republic of korea, Iran, Europe and parts of North America.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 by country

Economical touch

The coronavirus is not the offset serious epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives and acquired enormous economical losses to the global economy. In 2002, when the SARS epidemic began in China, officials and the general population did not immediately audio the alarm and were reluctant to share information with the international wellness community. Consequently, there were around viii,000 cases of the virus reported worldwide, and more than 750 people died as a result.

The Chinese government claimed that it had taken all the necessary measures to neutralize and contain the virus merely did not immediately denote official statistics on those infected and deceased. The bear upon was widespread as the land's economy lost 2–3% of its annual existent Gdp growth, total sales of goods and services brutal by 5%, and industrial product fell by half dozen% — these are just some of the negative effects of the epidemic.

Cumulative number of confirmed cases by major epidemic

This new coronavirus is no different — but its scale and economic consequences are more than severe than the 2002 SARS outbreak. Cases of infections have been detected in more than xx countries, and many of them, such every bit the United States, Singapore, Japan and Thailand have cutting off air travel with China in an attempt to contain the spread.

The economic consequences are still difficult to calculate, but some facts tin already be noted: Air France–KLM has disclosed that it had already suffered $200 million in losses due to the virus and that the airline industry had lost about $1 billion in full. Kia Motors has airtight all its manufacturing plants in Southward Korea; Apple has also joined in by suspending stores and factories in China, and New York has announced that it'south spending about $ane meg a twenty-four hour period fighting the disease. Global commodity markets besides shuddered, with the price of oil falling to a record low of $54 per butt over fears of declining resource consumption in Asian markets.

Blockchain in activeness

Certain stumbling blocks of by epidemics take withal not been solved. While it's unrealistic to expect whatever country to always be fully prepared for an event of this magnitude, there are some areas that tin exist improved through the implementation of interoperable blockchain solutions.

Tech companies and startups in the manufacture have recognized this and started to build a number of blockchain solutions aiming to track drug supply chains, medical supplies, managing medical data, advising citizens and identifying symptoms of infection.

Donation tracking

Trust has been a major issue throughout the early months of the coronavirus outbreak. Viral images and videos of donated supplies existence taken past not-medical personnel take caused an outrage on social media, with many hospitals in affected areas still pleading for more donations.

Red china's Ruddy Cross has a questionable reputation marred by previous scandals, causing citizens to reconsider their willingness to donate. In response, Hangzhou-based blockchain startup Hyperchain developed a donation-tracking platform that has already attracted $2 1000000 in donations.

Donors can see where funds are most urgently needed and so runway their donations until they are provided with a verification that their donations have been received. Existing donors include New Sunshine Clemency Foundation and Yuegou Living Supermarket, while donation recipients include Tangshan People's Hospital, Jiayu People's Hospital and Xiantao No. one People's Hospital in Hubei province — all of which are treating people infected with the coronavirus.

Insurance claims

Ant Fiscal's online mutual help platform Xiang Hu Bao is a blockchain-based collective merits-sharing platform with over 104 million users. 1 of the newest functions is to process coronavirus claims, helping the house to reduce paperwork and the demand for back-and-forth document delivery to clinics.

There is another advantage of blockchain equally well: to mitigate the risk of infection from face-to-face up contact, every bit the platform is able to process transactions without homo involvement. The platform'south website claims that information technology has managed to process over 25,000 claims.

Medical materials supply concatenation tracking

Alipay, along with the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission and the Economy and It Section, has launched a blockchain-based platform that enables users to trace the demand and the supply bondage of medical supplies. This included the recording and tracking of epidemic prevention materials, such as masks, gloves and other protective gear.

The shortage of facial masks has been one of the biggest challenges in China so far, with the National Development and Reform Commission, Prc'south top economic planning committee, being tasked with managing the supply. According to the NDRC, daily product is around 15.2 meg masks per day, with need estimated to be between 50 and lx million units.

This dramatic gap between supply and demand has led to a sharp rise in counterfeit production, with ane,560 arrests and 31 million fake face masks already seized in 688 cases in Red china so far. While information technology is probably as well late to implement major changes, the coronavirus has proven that the medical supply chain remains an area with a legitimate need for blockchain provenance solutions.

Around the world, steady progress is being fabricated to increment the connectivity of health intendance infrastructure. Terminal year in the U.South., the Food and Drug Assistants approved a multi-state pilot to use blockchain technology to rails medication shipments and usage in North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. The goal was to improve supply chain monitoring and quality command while providing information for more targeted inventory and remember management.

The project is managed by North Carolina-based Rymedi, a health care blockchain company partnered with Kadena, i of the inaugural companies from JPMorgan Chase's Blockchain Middle of Excellence.

Outbreak data tracking

Acoer provides health care and life sciences institutes with blockchain solutions to easily track the virus and visualize how it is spreading around the world using an app called HashLog. The coronavirus HashLog dashboard allows researchers, scientists and journalists to easily sympathize and follow the spread of the virus, as well as its trends over fourth dimension from a wide set of public information including data from the Heart for Disease Command and the World Wellness Organization. The platform's blockchain technology ensures that every slice of shared data cannot be manipulated or changed.

Cross-border payments

Another claiming for charities, governments and health organizations during large-scale disasters is the distribution of cross-border donations and payments. When the United Nations World Food Plan introduced blockchain technology for projects, such as distributing aid to vendors in Jordan, arranging money transfers for more than 10,000 Syrian refugees, and auditing beneficiary spending, it managed to reduce banking company transfer fees by most 98%. This would hateful that multinational non-profit organizations could save tens of millions of dollars that could exist allocated to aid projects instead.

Fulfilling the potential

Gild is now facing an uphill boxing to limit the outbreak'southward ramifications — which can provide blockchain technology with a golden opportunity to make a considerable impact. Beneath are some steps that can be implemented immediately:

  1. Multinational health organizations should implement a blockchain-based platform that will connect local hospitals and health organizations in potential zones into which the virus may spread.
  2. Local hospitals will exist able to record medical data about patients who show flu- or virus-like symptoms in the course of a public ID (patients will remain non-identifiable).
  3. This information will be further tracked by the health organizations in order to predict the spread of the virus based on the state of patients' medical statistics.
  4. Countries will be able to strengthen their preventive measures in the areas where the virus can potentially spread — e.m., increasing the workforce of medical staff, providing medical supplies.

In addition, testing passengers for symptoms of the virus who travel from countries that have already declared a state of emergency would be another method to receive data for high-hazard groups. These passengers will exist obligated to visit medical institutions in lodge to exist tested and tracked as mentioned above.

Blockchain systems should extend far beyond monitoring health care data. Many of the deadliest influenza outbreaks have come from mistreating livestock. In fact, the world is even so battling with the aftermath of the devastating African swine flu outbreak that has wiped out almost a quarter of the global pig population.

More organized tracking systems are needed to identify livestock and trace an outbreak before it becomes unmanageable. Besides its obvious utilise as a traceability tool, blockchain technology could grade a link among insurance companies, government bounty and farmers, allowing preventative measures along the supply chain to exist more decisive. Testing and certification could also be linked, giving farmers, health officials and machine learning algorithms accurate data to better sympathize the risk-level from region to region.

When an outbreak occurs, abrupt acumen and a quick reaction are the nigh of import weapons authorities have to oust the problem. Information technology's not outlandish to propose that during this electric current coronavirus epidemic, thousands of lives could accept been spared and billions of dollars in current and future economical losses saved.

Further improvements toward medical supply concatenation management, product and vaccine verification, tracking donations, nutrient safety and insurance processing can better back up the global community in its fight against viral containment, making blockchain technology a vital addition in the upcoming decade.