Coronavirus: How does free and open software contribute to the fight?

Coronavirus: How does Free and Open Software contribute to the fight?

As many of us already know, the disease of the year 2020 is the Coronavirus disease 2019, which is abbreviated COVID-19. Nomenclature from: "CO" corresponding to "Crown", "SAW" a "Virus" y "D" a "Disease" ("Disease"). What is caused by the current Coronavirus called "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 ".

Which is why, no wonder, that all the beneficial potential of Free Software and Open Source, is currently underway to collaborate with this fight that today, seriously afflicts the Humanity.

As we have seen, in some previous posts, among many others, such as:

El Free Software and Open Source has enormous beneficial potential, and has made valuable contributions, in the scientific-technological field, especially in terms of Health and Medicine. Therefore, it is not surprising that I currently know this using some tool Free and / or open software to fight the current virus and the disease it causes.

Coronavirus

What are Coronaviruses?

The Coronavirus They owe their name to the appearance they present, since they are very similar to a Crown or a halo. And in people they usually cause respiratory infections, which can range from the common cold to more serious illnesses such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The Coronavirus They are part of a large family of viruses, some that affect people, and others that affect animals, such as camels, cats, and bats. For now, according to the genetic tree of this virus, it appears to come from bats. But, in that case, it is also not known how the virus could have jumped directly from bats to humans, or if there was an intermediate host animal.

According to International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, institution in charge of assigning the names to the new viruses detected, for the date of the February 11 2020The new Coronavirus (first identified in Wuhan, China) is now named after Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2The simplemente COVID-2. Which leaves clearly established, the relationship of this with the previous one, called SARS (SARS-CoV), which caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS or SARS) in the 2002-2003.

What is COVID-19?

El COVID-19 is a new disease, caused by a novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which had not been seen before in humans. Its signs and symptoms can appear between two and 14 days after being exposed, and can include the manifestation of Fever, cough and shortness of breath or trouble breathing.

To know much more about the COVID-19 and COVID-2 It is recommended to access the following links: Mayo Clinic y CDC.

Free Software and Open Source against Coronavirus

Although, currently the COVID-19 It has affected the realization of many events and activities of all kinds worldwide, including those related to the Free Software and Open Source, such as those of SUSECON, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon y Red Hat Summit 2020. And it may continue to affect others such as opensouthcode 2020 y Academy s 2020, Free Software and Open Source has been contributing to the research and fight against COVID-19.

Among the latests Moravia's compositions free and open software tools used for this purpose we can mention the following applications:

GitHub

Currently, this site provides its services to store and share the complete details about the bioinformatic processing on the scheme of 172 genomes so far, obtained from the COVID-19 between December 2019 to March 2020. Read more.

GISAID Initiative

It is an open initiative that promotes the international exchange of all influenza virus sequences, associated clinical and epidemiological data related to human viruses, and geographic and species-specific data related to avian and other animal viruses, to Helping researchers understand how they evolve, spread and can become pandemics has contributed to the fight. Read more.

Rampart

This Open Source Software was used to assign and map real-time readings on the virus COVID-2, since it is an application specially designed to read assignments, mappings and phylogenetic analysis in real time. Read more.

CommCare

The collaboration of this open source mobile case management platform used by 700.000 frontline healthcare workers in more than 60 countries to follow up with clients, through a continuous delivery of services, commodity supply chain and messages to patients, has been a valuable help in the fight. Read more.

Community Health Toolkit (CHT)

This Community Health Toolkit is a global public good that includes open source technologies for community health workers and supervisors, open access resources, and a community of practice to promote universal health coverage. Against COVID-19 it can serve as support by sending SMS text messages, data analysis, supporting events, disseminating educational messages, among many more ways. Read more.

As we can see, you are and many others free and open software tools, are or can be, useful against this current evil. For the rest, we hope we can win one more time, this new world battle against this global disease on duty.

Conclusion

We hope this "useful little post" on the contribution or contribution of the «Software Libre, Código Abierto» in the fight against the current regrettable evil of «Coronavirus», which currently causes deaths, health damage and even economic worldwide, is of great interest and utility, for the entire «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» and of great contribution to the diffusion of the wonderful, gigantic and growing ecosystem of applications of «GNU/Linux».

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