How Amazon's scientists in India built tech to protect against coronavirus

The e-commerce giant Amazon's machine learning team in India is also developing innovations for customers worldwide

As soon as the coronavirus pandemic struck, Rajeev Rastogi, vice-president of machine learning at e-commerce giant Amazon India, became interested in what he and his team could do as scientists to keep people safe and help them get what they need during these trying times. 

“Could we use technology to generate an infection risk score for each individual? These scores could be leveraged by governments and organisations to prioritise testing and identify individuals to quarantine,” says Rastogi in a company blog post.

Covid-19 spreads through contacts. Many governments have developed contact-tracing apps that use Bluetooth signals on mobile phones to