Coronavirus continues to plague humanity, with more than 95,000 cases worldwide, leading to more than 3,200 deaths. Global authorities are struggling to contain the outbreak of the strain known as COVID-19 and to find a cure for the deadly disease.
However, one tech company is now giving you the opportunity to get involved with the race to the vaccine.
A collaboration between the Folding@home Consortium, of Stanford University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center allows you to download software onto your computer which allows scientists to use the space on your PC which is empty.
Essentially, you are renting out the space on your PC to provide extra power and resources to a distributed network of computers.
The additional computation power allows for faster processing of models which could lead to a cure.
A statement from Folding@home said: “We need your help! Folding@home is joining researchers around the world working to better understand the 2019 Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) to accelerate the open science effort to develop new life-saving therapies.
“By downloading Folding@Home, you can donate your unused computational resources to the Folding@home Consortium, where researchers working to advance our understanding of the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV that could aid in the design of new therapies.
“The data you help us generate will be quickly and openly disseminated as part of an open science collaboration of multiple laboratories around the world, giving researchers new tools that may unlock new opportunities for developing lifesaving drugs.
“Proteins are not stagnant — they wiggle and fold and unfold to take on numerous shapes.
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Some experts believe coronavirus could be with us for good.
Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, told Business Insider: “This is going to be with us for some time – it’s endemic in human populations and not going to go away without a vaccine.
“It may decrease in transmission frequency so that you’ll be able to have time to get a vaccine scaled up by the next appearance of it.”