The purpose of this document is to provide a guide to the open source initiatives working to fight the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Read on if you would like to help out.

Open source technology refers to projects where the source code is freely available to the public, many of which would welcome anyone who can contribute.

If you’re interested in contributing, see if these projects have issues in their GitHub repositories or other tasks that you might be able to help with. If you don’t think you have enough technical expertise, help spread the word! See if any of your friends and family might be able to help out with open source (1) Software or (2) Hardware.

1. Software

In the table below you will find a few open source projects to contribute to/look at. Here is a more complete list (note that the projects with more stars are probably more impactful and better to contribute to).

| Project Name | Objective | Language | Code | Demo | |---|------|---|---|---| | CHIME: Covid-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics | Estimates the resources needed for hospitals (# of patients requiring ICUs, ventilation, etc.) for capacity planning. | Python | GitHub | Demo | | Locale.ai Covid-19 live visualization | Visualizes the pandemic using open source data. | JavaScript (Vue.js) | GitHub | Demo | | Tokyo Covid-19 Task Force Website | Official government website for all information about Covid-19 in Tokyo. | JavaScript (Node.js) | GitHub | Demo | | Novel Coronavirus Dataset (from JHU CSSE) | Largest available official dataset of Covid-19 cases. | N/A | Dataset | Visualization |

2. Hardware

Probably even more important than software right now is open source hardware. Current projects include low-cost ventilators, PCR tools, and distributed computing. Whether you’re a designer, builder, or anything in between, these projects could use your help! Contributing is not as standardized as with software, so I’d suggest you go join the Open Hardware Summit Discord Server to find out how you can help (they have a #covid-19 channel).

For an introduction to some of the biggest projects going on right now, check out this article.

Thanks for reading and best of luck contributing. Stay safe out there!

— Anthony Zhou, open source advocate