Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Ameliorating the Impact of Global Pandemic: Lessons from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, affected the lives and livelihoods of the global population in numerous ways. The world united its resources and efforts to improve pandemic management, detection and treatment and preparedness for future threats. During this pandemic, man’s resilience has been abetted immensely by data science, technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. In this review, we first summarise the multifarious impacts of COVID-19 on society and follow it up with a short treatment of the current COVID-19 data. The main focus of this article is on the many ways in which data science and AI have enabled us to ameliorate the effects of this pandemic. Drawing from the literature, we offer some ideas for improving our preparedness for future pandemic scenarios with the aid of data science, AI and global cooperation. The challenges that lie ahead include accuracy of information and data security in the generation and updating of a global database in real time; complexity and intricate interdependencies of data in analysing or inferring from the massive global data. Expert systems for analysis of risk, evaluation of patient symptoms or optimisation of the medical/essential commodities management would be suggested.