India part of US-led initiative to share info on integrating science to coronavirus response

White House has said that India is part of a US-led global initiative to share information on integrating science into coronavirus response. 

Besides the US and India, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea are part of the initiative. The second conference call by the science ministers and chief advisors of these countries was held on Wednesday. It was convened by the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Dr Kelvin Droegemeier.

During the second conference call, participants supported efforts to make available COVID-19 relevant publications, data, and related research in PubMed Central and other



publicly accessible repositories immediately. The countries under the initiative also agreed to make available timely data and publications for addressing emerging infectious disease outbreaks. These countries also noted that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to organise and synthesise certain data and information to expedite this process.

According to the White House, AI tools and analyses should also be made publicly available in a timely manner, the participants said. Science leaders discussed opportunities to promote and strengthen common data repositories, such as the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), the White House said.