IT Ministry: AI, 5G accelerate COVID-19 diagnosis, vaccine development

Artificial intelligence (AI), big data and 5G have all played important roles in diagnosis and vaccine development of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), and the resumption of production in China, Xie Shaofeng, an official of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said in a press conference on Wednesday.

Xie told the press that the technologies can improve the efficiency of epidemic situation analysis, virus tracing, patient tracking and community management amid the outbreak.

He also called on companies to accelerate the process of resuming production by adopting technologies including industrial internet, AI and virtual reality (VR) to explore new production and service formats such as unmanned production, online service, remote operation and maintenance.

(Cover photo via VCG)