The COVID-19 crisis: A digital policy overview

A number of tech companies and medical and scientific institutions worldwide have put their faith into digital technologies – particularly artificial intelligence (AI) – in an attempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19. When the pandemic first broke out, China’s top tech giants opened their AI and cloud computing solutions to researchers for free to unlock the full potential of these technologies in order to predict the course of the development of the disease and to find a vaccine.

Similarly, days before the WHO issued an alert on the COVID-19 outbreak, Canadian AI company BlueDot had already published warnings regarding the disease. BlueDot’s AI-powered algorithms process an enormous amount of unstructured data from 100 000 news articles in 65 languages on a daily basis. Its massive pool of data includes animal disease, temperature, and climate information, as well as flight records that all help to predict viral spread patterns.

There have been examples of AI being deployed in the form of tiny robots serving food and providing medical help to quarantined people in China, or as chatbots that screen individuals and tell them whether they should be evaluated in case of possible infection.

AI has also joined the quest for a vaccine. According to media reports, the potential uses of AI to help in vaccine distribution is being explored. AI is expected to play a significant role in the following areas: triage and impact modelling, demand forecasting, supply-chain management, and post-vaccination surveillance. However, the risks of deploying poorly designed AI for vaccine allocation was demonstrated in December 2020, when Stanford Medicine relied on an algorithm to develop a vaccine distribution plan that failed to include health staff that had direct contact with COVID-19 patents, and instead included ‘more established doctors who carried a lower risk of patient transmission’. 

Other limits of AI have been shown by, for instance, an AI-powered simulation that predicted that COVID-19 could infect 2.5 billion people and kill as many as 52.9 million on the basis of publicly available data released by China. However, the model does not know every factor, and many conditions, such as the mortality rate, tend to continuously change and thus hamper the credibility of the prediction.

The Coronavirus has also caused quite a stir in terms of cybersecurity. Betting their chips on fear, cybercriminals are said to exploit the situation and spread malicious content with misleading information about the coronavirus. 

Some of the factors that have contributed to the increase in cyberattacks are higher security risks due to remote working or learning, delays in cyberattack detection and response, exposed physical security by working from public spaces and using free internet, and the like.

As COVID-19 vaccines started being approved and administered, multiple authorities have warned about cybercriminals exploiting the situation, including Interpol, Europol, and the FBI. According to the warnings, cybercriminals have taken to advertising and selling fake vaccines in exchange for money and data.

Additionally, nation-states going after other countries’ vaccine supply chains has become a concern. In September 2020, hackers began a phishing campaign targeted at organisations associated with a COVID-19 cold chain (a temperature-controlled supply chain necessary to keep vaccines from spoiling in high temperatures). In 2021, US adversaries have been trying to interfere with Operation Warp Speed, the US government operation distributing the vaccines.

With more than half of the world’s population using social media, the platforms have proved useful in tackling suppression of information in the media. From exchanges of information on situations in hospitals to the dissemination of knowledge, networking platforms have become the go-to-source for many. Nevertheless, measures to prevent the spread of what some actors have dubbed as ‘rumors’ on social media have been widespread and as such have affected the right to freedom of expression of many. According to several sources, activists have been detained, harassed, and intimidated by the authorities for pandemic-related content they posted online. 

The pandemic has also given way to concerns of violations of the right to privacy and data protection. In 2020, a heated debate regarding contact tracing apps took place with much attention being paid to privacy issues pertaining to collection and storage of data through the previously mentioned apps. 

The increase in social media-based human trafficking and exploitation has also been observed. To illustrate, according to a recent study from Europol, child predators are said to be developing approaches on online platforms as to how to exploit children during lockdown. In order to combat such practices, tech companies have been encouraged by UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to employ AI and big data tools to prevent and combat trafficking of girls and women. 

The role of data in the Coronavirus crisis cannot be highlighted enough. From the risk assessment and monitoring of the pandemic to keeping records of infected people, data collection has been central. 

Much of the attention is accorded to data collection that enabled the prediction and identification of the pandemic. As noted above, on the basis of data collected by BlueDot, early warning of the virus was communicated to the WHO. Similarly, data collected by medical centres on patients’ geographic location and infection status was entered into a government database known as the ‘National Infectious Disease Monitoring Information System Database’ ultimately helped Chinese authorities identify where the initial COVID-19 outbreak had started.

Data visualisation has also been put to use. Online data platforms have been created to track the spread of the Coronavirus worldwide. Data on the number of COVID-19 cases, deaths, number of tests, vaccines and many other related metrics are available on numerous platforms, presented in the form of a table or an interactive map, which are updated regularly. 

In response to the Coronavirus outbreak, other calls for and initiatives regarding data sharing have surfaced. The Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus invited health ministers of member states to improve data-sharing measures related to COVID-19. Academia and the private sector are for their part involved in data sharing. Data has been shared through Github by Harvard Medical School, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, and Metabiota, a risk analysis company. 

More data, however, does not mean more balanced and evidence-based policies. Very often, especially in dealing with risks, we miss context and reference. For example, are current actions of cancelling flights or in some cases boycotting Chinese goods proportional to the risk level? The answer is no. The Coronavirus death rate is estimated at around 2% which is significantly lower in comparison to 14–15% in the case of SARS, 50% for ebola, or 35% during the MERS epidemics. There is not enough data to make informed and reasonable policies in proportion to current and potential risks. That said, AI may help us put data in the right context of risks and societal priorities and in turn facilitate evidence-informed policy-making.

Despite initial predictions that the effects of the coronavirus on the global economy would be worse than those of SARS, the digital economy is showing no sign of a slowdown. 

One of the most obvious trends following the outbreak of the Coronavirus is the surge in teleworking. Fearing the spread of the virus, companies have requested employees to work from home in what has been dubbed the ‘world’s largest teleworking experiment’.  

E-commerce is also thriving. Due to the shutdown of cities, people have resorted to purchasing their groceries and other necessities online. Some reports mention an increase in the business activity of e-commerce companies in China.

One of the human development issues most prominently associated with the coronavirus crisis is access. Access to the internet is equivalent to access to information, including that on the spread of disease, as well as access to education and work.

A number of schools experienced difficulty in providing online learning to their students for several reasons, ranging from a lack of necessary infrastructure and appropriate training for educators, as well as the general absence of digitalised teaching content. Furthermore, students lacking access to broadband have been deprived from joining and participating in the new learning environment.   

Data shows that many more children worldwide were kept out of the education system in 2020 compared to previous years. It is estimated that half of the total number of learners affected by school closures do not have access to a household computer, and 43% have no internet access at home.

Capacity development is another noteworthy issue. In an effort to improve the response to health emergencies, the WHO has created OpenWHO, an interactive platform offering online courses that provide their users with the newest scientific and practical know-how.

For the very start of the crisis, misinformation about the outbreak has been on the rise, thus leading to the so-called ‘infodemic’. In the early stages, the WHO, for instance, established a ‘myth busters’ page intended to address mis- and disinformation related to the spread of the disease.

Tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google also joined efforts to address fake news. Through the activation of an ‘SOS alert’ for searches linked to Coronavirus outbreak, Google has provided users with the latest tweets,  advisory information, and other relevant resources provided by the WHO.

The growth in online acts of hate speech have also contributed to the ‘Coronaracism’ phenomenon, as well as the rise of stigmatisation on social media. In order to study such negative developments, Twitter has recently announced that it will be providing researchers with free access to data (i.e. public tweets that contain such content).

In response to the spread of COVID-19, authorities have taken a set of measures ranging from travel restrictions to city shut downs. Education is another area of social life that has been affected by the outbreak. 

Schools and universities across the world are resorting to online learning. In Italy, a number of schools have closed down since the outbreak and the authorities have resorted to different digital tools and platforms, such as Skype, Google Suite for Education and Office 365 Education to keep the classes going. The Ministry of Education has called on school directors to activate, for the duration of the suspension of teaching activities in schools, distance teaching methods, with particular attention to the specific needs of students with disabilities. 

In China, telecom carriers developed online learning solutions to enable students to continue their studies from home while regular classes have been suspended at schools. 

However, a number of schools are experiencing difficulty in providing online learning to their students for several reasons ranging from lack of necessary infrastructure, appropriate training for educators and general absence of digitalised teaching content. Furthermore, students lacking access to the broadband will not be able to join and participate in the new learning environment.

The spread of the Coronavirus has also caused a stir in summit and conference circles. 

Events and conferences have either been cancelled or postponed to a later date or held online. Major international organisations, countries, and other stakeholders have resorted to making the most of online conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Webex, and others. For instance, the 15th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held entirely on Zoom. On the other hand, the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) applied a hybrid approach – heads of states and governments, as well as foreign affairs ministers, delivered pre-recorded statements from their respective capitals while representatives of national missions to the UN were physically present at the UN.