Abstract | On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO, Pneumonia of unknown cause in China, 2020) was notified of a cluster of cases with unknown reasons of the people being affected by pneumonia in the Wuhan City, China. On January 7, 2020, the Chinese authorities and experts declared the novel coronavirus as the root cause. It was in that very first instance labeled as Novel Coronavirus (WHO 2019) on February 11, 2020. A new type that has not been found before in human beings, Coronaviruses (CoV) are a diverse family of viruses that cause infections ranging from common colds to greater serious and grave illnesses. Augmenting their surveillance, countries around the world are tracking and finding new 2019-nCoV (novel coronavirus) cases. Use of modern technologies along with healthcare/medical systems is pervasive around the globe for an effective response and reduction of disease outbreak. Along with the evolution of biomedical response, an advanced technological response is also evolving to combat the pandemic. Technologies such as Big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, remote sensing and others are linked to medical technologies for a prompt, rapid and effective response (Shaw et al., Governance, technology and citizen behavior in pandemic: lessons from COVID-19 in East Asia, Prog Disaster Sci 6:10009, 2020). This chapter covers a brief history of epidemics and technology, technology in healthcare, manufacturing production and surveillance under COVID-19 control measures. |
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