It’s undeniable that the coronavirus pandemic has had an irreversible effect on virtually all facets of daily live, but with a clutch of countries now beginning to loosen Covid restrictions, there are hopes that the world may finally be emerging from the turmoil that has enveloped it over the last two years.

It now makes sense for the global population to look towards a new semblance of normality – one that will be characterized by remarkable advances in artificial intelligence (AI), data science and other digital technology, which could provide significant assistance in keeping Covid, as well as any other viral diseases that may arise, under control.

The merits of AI have already been amply displayed during the pandemic, with regard to its diagnostics, forecasting, drug development and screening capabilities.

Moving forward, it’s logical that it could provide similar succor in enabling to live with the virus – but without the existential anxiety that has accompanied it thus far.

Virus retreating, but not defeated

Just over two years since the discovery of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, the virus may finally be in retreat. With an increasing number of US states dropping mandatory rules on social distancing and mask wearing while many European countries have been rolling back restrictions as well, US chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci has said he believes America, and the rest of the world, may be “approaching normality”.

However, as that possibility becomes ever more probable, so too do people’s perceptions of how the future is likely to unfold. At the outset of the pandemic, 74% of Britons surveyed said they believed it would blow over within a year. Fast forward to November 2021 and that figure fell to a measly 20%, meaning the vast majority of people think a return to normality will not come until 2023. 14% believe it never will.

AI brings speed and smarts to society’s safe re-opening

Even if those predictions turn out to be true, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Covid will become an unshakeable scourge. A look at how far things have come in containing it in a relatively short of space of time, thanks in large part to the impetus and insight afforded by technological advancements, gives cause for hope. AI, in particular, has had a crucial role to play. Tech such as thermal screening in particular is likely set to become a staple for public health at public venues, whereas it was previously limited mostly to airports.

Now, thermal screening is expected to become commonplace in society, as has already been witnessed in a plethora of US locales. A case in point is New York, where an exclusive co-working club is using special Biosafety Thermal Kits created by Remark AI, a NASDAQ traded technology company specializing in AI-based solutions, to discreetly screen staff and guests at entry points for staff and guests, obviating the need for cumbersome personal testing interactions.

That same technology is being deployed at Wynn Resorts, a hotel-casino in Las Vegas and a medical services provider in Oklahoma. Such precautions are likely to become standard practice before long, because they allow the detection of abnormal body temperatures in line with viral infections without the need to allocate extra staff members off their regular duties for manual temperature checks.

But that’s not all. The development of viable vaccine candidates was greatly accelerated by AI’s ability to predict potential virus structures and speed up genome sequencing, with one piece of tech from Chinese giant Baidu able to anticipate secondary RNA sequence structures in 27 seconds, compared to the 55 minutes it would traditionally have taken.

The same breakneck pace of AI was visible in other areas, too. A Canadian start-up company was the first to spot the initial outbreak of the disease thanks to their sophisticated use of AI, while a South Korean company cut the design process for Covid testing kits from months to weeks by deploying the tech appropriately. At the same time, the research arm of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba used AI to process hundreds of scans to diagnose Covid patients in under half a minute. An experienced doctor would have been hard pushed to achieve the same task in a quarter of an hour.

Of course, haste and hustle are useless in the medical world unless they are backed up by accuracy and dependability, but AI delivers on those counts, too. A comprehensive review of 78 studies revealed that AI had consistently proven effective throughout the pandemic with diagnostic and prognostic accuracy rates of 70% to 99.92% and 74% to 95%, respectively.  Those findings were backed up by other qualitative and quantitative studies from India, China and the UK, as well.

The AI future is now

In light of these varied uses of AI – from actively fighting Covid to creating a safe post-pandemic environment – it’s only consequential that global organizations have been quick to recognize the potential of AI and incorporate it into their plan for navigating a way out of the current pandemic, as well as avoiding future ones.

The World Health Organization (WHO) for instance has launched its Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which aims to leverage AI, quantum computing and other state-of-the-art tech tools to futureproof society against a repeat scenario. It has also established a literature database of over 300,000 Covid-related scientific papers, as well as publishing guidance on how individual countries can ensure good governance and ethical practices surrounding the use of AI.

Although a return to the world we left behind in 2019 might be beyond us, AI has already demonstrated it is capable of overcoming Covid-19 in so many ways. For its next trick, it is now tasked with turning this long-dangling sword of Damocles into nothing more than a peripheral distraction, front-page news into background noise.