Imagine that you are trying to use one candle to light up an entire room, not very effective right? Now imagine trying to use a giant floodlight for the same purpose, much more effective. This is a quick analogy of quantum computing, which has the same use as a normal computer, but completes tasks much more effectively, efficiently, and much quicker. I won’t go into the details of how quantum computing works because that would take a lot longer than the purpose of this blog.

To combat the coronavirus, D-Wave, a pioneer in quantum computing, is giving researchers and companies free access to their systems to speed up the process in researching and finding a vaccine and treatment for COVID-19. Using quantum computing, researchers could possibly be able to sequence the genome to the virus by using the fundamental particles of what makes up everything (protons, neutrons, etc.). Once this is done, they will hopefully be able to figure out how to attack it within the body. There are many incredible aspects of quantum computing that could be very useful in the future, considering that the technology is at its infancy. Teleportation has also been talked about in this context, sadly only with data, not people.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/d-wave-opens-quantum-computing-resources-to-coronavirus-research-11585763422

To learn more on quantum computing, I recommend reading up on IBM’s systems:

https://www.ibm.com/quantum-computing/learn/what-is-quantum-computing/