GOAL: A crystal ball for Covid-19 

Over the next two months, the platform from the AI engineers will collect data that will provide insight into how citizens have behaved in response to measures taken to stop the disease. In addition, the platform is to analyze the impact of the pandemic on the economy. It will do this by comparing the increase in the number of Corona patients with the fall in stock market prices, among other things. On this basis, it is possible to assess the probability of a recession as a result of the pandemic. And predict how deep it might become.

The greater economic effect and its snowball effect on wellbeing 

When we started we saw two big issues that required more attention:

• The burden on the healthcare system & its breaking point
• The greater economic effect and its snowball effect on wellbeing

Both of these challenges require one first input, a more accurate prediction of the infection spread. It requires either an exact simulation of this world down to the up-quark or a deep insight into how a coronavirus (or a flu virus) spreads in specific areas.  With historical, fine-grain data of airborne diseases spreading, we can predict the further spread of covid-19. 

We have partnered up with Omdena to take this challenge to the next level. We’ll be analyzing the effectiveness of different policies governments have instated. More information on this project can be found here.

Did you know

• infection rate (R0) of the common flu is 1.3, giving 146 infections after 20 contaminations, covid-19 has an R0 of ~2.5, resulting in *36 million* infections in the same timespan!
• the death rate of the flu is 0.1% and of covid-19 1.6%, resulting in current estimates of 10 to 100 times more deaths than the flu globally, aka 5 to 50 million people!
• biggest threat now: a collapse of the healthcare system due to overloading – there’s only beds for about 0.28% of our population, we need to slow the infection now.
• solution: a swift and common community response is the only way we can contain this virus, by canceling events, limiting social contact (especially with at-risk groups like your grandparents or other people’s children) and of course abiding by the hygiene guidelines.