An Exhaustive Survey of Blockchain Applications with the Internet of Things (IoT) to Combat COVID-19 Spread

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), triggered by the upsurge of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has emerged as a pandemic (widespread) in recent days which has made the life of people all over the globe standstill. Thus, in this strenuous situation, there is a need for applications that automate the process and complete with the minimum usage of human resources and well within the stipulated time along with security considerations. To mitigate the above-said challenges, ingenious technologies like Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) have come to light as promising solutions. The main intention of using IoT with Blockchain is to strengthen security and bring transparency in data collected from various external devices. Hence, this paper presents an exhaustive summary and review of the various Blockchain applications integrated with IoT to combat this COVID-19 situation. Taking into account a decent bunch of well-organized scholastic literature, we have broadly classified Blockchain-based IoT applications into four major segments which are smart healthcare, government, banking, and supply chain management to sustain in these difficult times. We shed light on a collective survey of COVID impact on abovementioned four segments, and then, we discuss measurable preventive actions that Blockchain with IOT can provide, and finally, we pull out challenges and future considerations that shed light on more research efforts in order to handle future coronavirus-like pandemic. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.