The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the newly discovered Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus two (SARS-CoV-2). Most of the people do not have the acquired immunity to fight this virus. There is no specific treatment or medicine to cure the disease. The effects of this disease appear to vary from individual to individual, right from mild cough, fever to respiratory disease. It also leads to mortality in many people. As the virus has a very rapid transmission rate, the entire world is in distress. The control and prevention of this disease has evolved as an urgent and critical issue to be addressed through technological solutions. The Healthcare industry therefore needs support from the domain of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the inherent capability of imitating the human brain and assisting in decision-making support by automatically learning from input data. It can process huge amounts of data quickly without getting tiresome and making errors. AI technologies and tools significantly relieve the burden of healthcare professionals. In this paper, we review the critical role of AI in responding to different research challenges around the COVID-19 crisis. A sample implementation of a powerful probabilistic machine learning (ML) algorithm for assessment of risk levels of individuals is incorporated in this paper. Other pertinent application areas such as surveillance of people and hotspots, mortality prediction, diagnosis, prognostic assistance, drug repurposing and discovery of protein structure, and vaccine are presented. The paper also describes various challenges that are associated with the implementation of AI-based tools and solutions for practical use.

冠状病毒病（COVID-19）是由新发现的严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒二号（SARS-CoV-2）引起的传染病。大多数人没有获得抵抗这种病毒的免疫力。没有特定的治疗方法或药物可以治愈这种疾病。这种疾病的影响似乎因人而异，从轻微咳嗽、发烧到呼吸道疾病。它还导致许多人死亡。由于病毒传播速度极快，全世界都陷入困境。这种疾病的控制和预防已成为需要通过技术解决方案解决的紧迫而关键的问题。因此，医疗保健行业需要人工智能（AI）领域的支持。人工智能具有模仿人脑的固有能力，通过从输入数据中自动学习来辅助决策支持。它可以快速处理大量数据，而不会令人厌烦和出错。人工智能技术和工具显着减轻了医疗保健专业人员的负担。在本文中，我们回顾了人工智能在应对围绕 COVID-19 危机的不同研究挑战方面的关键作用。本文纳入了用于评估个人风险水平的强大概率机器学习 (ML) 算法的示例实现。还介绍了其他相关的应用领域，例如人员和热点监测、死亡率预测、诊断、预后辅助、药物再利用和蛋白质结构发现以及疫苗。本文还描述了与实际使用基于人工智能的工具和解决方案的实施相关的各种挑战。