(Yicai Global) March 19 -- Alibaba Group Holding's cloud services arm Alibaba Cloud is offering its Covid-19 diagnosis technology free to medical personnel worldwide to help fight against the pandemic, the firm said today.

The technology can help medical staff diagnose a patient in just 20 second with a 96 percent accuracy rate, the Hangzhou-based company said in a statement. Over 160 Chinese hospitals have already used it on more than 260,000 patients.

Covid-19 had infected 136,900 people in 156 countries and regions outside of China as of 11 a.m. today, with more than 18,000 new confirmed cases and 5,650 deaths logged yesterday.

Alibaba Cloud's sister firm DingTalk has also launched its International Medical Expert Communication Platform worldwide to facilitate contact between experienced doctors at different medical institutions.

Through video conferencing and real-time artificial intelligence translation into 11 languages, the firm hopes to build a virtual community of Chinese doctors who can share their experience and answer questions from global peers using Alibaba Cloud in more than 200 countries and regions across the world.

Editor: James Boynton