- Viral pneumonia is spreading all over the world while the balance sheets decrease in China, at the epicenter of the epidemic.
- China has not backed down from any technological feat to try to curb the epidemic.
- Are new technologies the answer to this crisis?
Can new technologies help us avoid the worst when the threat of a pandemic hangs over the world? China has not backed down from any technological feat to try to curb the coronavirus epidemic.
The country, where the new coronavirus appeared in a market in Wuhan (center) in December, recorded 71 new deaths in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, the lowest figure in nearly three weeks. But outside the country, more than 2,000 cases of contamination, including more than 30 fatalities, have now been recorded.
Robots and drones to avoid contact
Are drones, artificial intelligence, robots the answer to panic? In any case, they help limit human contact and China has not been deprived. Android servers take the place of men to bring meals to quarantined patients in a hospital in Wuhan, according to Chinese media, relayed by an RFI article. In east China's Jiangsu Province, robots on wheels 1.25 meters high and with a maximum load capacity of 145 liters are busy delivering residents to avoid contamination, according to the Information Center on Internet of China.
In several villages of the country, drones, intended to spread pesticides, have been hijacked to disinfect the streets while others deliver medicines or masks to people under house arrest.
While technology has a big role to play in preventing the spread of coronavirus in quarantine, it can also be used to diagnose new cases through facial recognition. Several Chinese companies, including Baidu, have developed infrared cameras, doped with artificial intelligence, which can measure the body heat of 15 people at the same time, to within 0.3 ° C, and sound an alarm in case of fever.
The problem of the absence of symptoms
Taking temperatures can identify people at risk, but if the individual does not have a fever, if he has not incubated, the technology is no longer useful. "The big problem with infectious diseases is that, very often, the clinical cases that arise are the tip of the iceberg," said François Renaud, CNRS researcher in the laboratory, specialist in infectious diseases and vectors. There is a whole community of people who can have it and who do not report clinical signs. ”
More than technology, China has mainly benefited from its authoritarian system to limit contamination. "The world was" lucky "that the epidemic began in China, because the country is able to impose things on its citizens that no democracy would be able to impose", analyzes his side Jean-Michel Claverie, researcher at the Genomic and Structural Information laboratory (CNRS / Aix-Marseille University). Indeed, the country has imposed very severe precautionary measures on its inhabitants.
According to the New York Times , movement restriction and control measures affect nearly 760 million people, more than half of its population. In this context, technology makes it possible to control, but not to prevent the disease from spreading. It only remains to observe how the other affected countries will cope with the epidemic, with or without drones.
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