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The COVID-19 pandemic has altered our lives drastically and unprecedented steps have been taken to minimize the spread of the novel corona-virus which causes COVID-19. As of the time of writing this article, nearly 3.2 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed with more than 225000 deaths globally due to this pandemic. The peculiarity of COVID-19 is that its symptoms may not be conspicuous until about 14 days after an individual gets infected, which poses a huge challenge in containing its spread, which at the time of writing is more than 85000 confirmed COVID-19 cases globally per day. Early detection of symptoms, testing of symptomatic individuals and quarantine of confirmed COVID-19 positive individuals is vital to containing the spread, in the absence of treatment or cure for COVID-19. Based on our earlier work on estimating biological parameters such as heart rate from speech using artificial intelligence, in this article, an overview of the possibility of using speech for detecting COVID-19 symptoms at an early stage, much before the symptoms become conspicuous, is provided. In addition to early detection, the use of speech to detect COVID-19 symptoms has other advantages-low cost & ubiquitous, does not require complex & expensive medical devices or even specialist medical professionals for initial flagging of symptomatic individuals. An'app'on mobile device can analyze the individuals speech to detect COVID-19 symptoms and alert the individual/healthcare authorities.