Introduction

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in late 2019 caused a global health emergency around the world . In just over three months, the number of coronavirus new cases has escalated to more than a million worldwide. The rapid transmission of the virus leads to new cases being reported globally by the hour. Simultaneously, the number of deaths and infections continue to rise quickly. Consequently, the COVID-19 pandemic has enforced lockdowns and social distancing guidelines affecting global economies negatively. It has led to the cancellation of many important world’s activities, including sporting events such as the Tokyo Olympics and Dubai Expo . As a result, government officials and scientists across the globe have been rigorously working towards developing a cure and predicting the potential growth trajectory of the virus since the first few cases that were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition to forecasting the casualties and growth of COVID-19 cases, many reports also count the active and recovered cases collected from national and state government health agencies along with local media reports.
In fact, every day a new set of baffling data points are reported concerning the number of positive and negative tests, patients hospitalized, deaths, hospital beds occupied, ventilator shortfalls etc. These numbers allow the officials and public to track the progress of COVID-19 in real-time making it a data-driven pandemic . On the other hand, these numbers pose a major problem as decisions based on such data is often imperfect and incomplete. Thus, the introduction of tracking apps becomes necessary and valuable to help prevent the spread of this virus. Tech giants, researchers and healthcare officials started using contact tracing mobile apps that use Bluetooth-based proximity tracing or geolocation tracking functionality to help track COVID-19 cases . Several organizations have even developed map-based-dashboards to track information. Understanding the dynamics of the pandemic requires good data to predict how fast the disease spreads, whether the countermeasures are effective or not and the impact it has on the lives of people. However, data available online may not be perfect as it is susceptible to data manipulation.
Hence, innovative technologies such as deep learning, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain could help combat the crisis. In particular, blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize various industries including finance, supply chain and healthcare sector. Blockchain is a decentralized technology with distinct in-built features such as impenetrable information infrastructure, transparency and cryptographic encryption tools. It is a distributed ledger containing a chain of blocks. Blockchain’s decentralized platform is tamper-proof due to its underlying cryptographic technology which is used to authenticate participants in the network. Moreover, it requires a lot of resources to be able to modify transactions added to the blockchain network because once a transaction is validated and verified then it gets chained to previous transactions with a unique hash. Hence, manipulating one transaction would change this hash and all members would be alerted making it almost impossible to update or delete
Table 1
Comparison between using a traditional centralized platform vs. a blockchain platform