As COVID-19 (Coronavirus) spreads across the world with unprecedented effect, IBM has added it to 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge. This year’s Challenge takes on both climate change and COVID-19, two urgent crises facing our world today.

Nearly one month ago, together with Creator David Clark Cause and in partnership with United Nations Human Rights and the Linux Foundation, IBM announced climate change as the theme for the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge. However, much has changed since then. COVID-19 now has the potential to become the greatest crisis of modern times.

As Call for Code aims to take on society’s most pressing issues, this year’s Challenge is now being expanded to address both climate change and COVID-19.

According to IBM, the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge will arm developers, data scientists, and problem solvers with resources to build open source technology solutions that address three main COVID-19 areas: crisis communication during an emergency, ways to improve remote learning, and how to inspire cooperative local communities.

This year, the competition will have two tracks. One track is for solutions that help halt and reverse the impact of climate change. The second track is for solutions to mitigate the impact of global pandemics like COVID-19 on communities around the world.

“You can register and get started now creating applications with our open source-powered software built on Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, IBM Blockchain, and data from The Weather Company. As we’ve done the previous two years, IBM will work with the teams who create the most promising solutions to build, fortify, test, and deploy them through IBM Code and Response,” IBM said in a statement.