Machine learning research towards combating COVID-19: Virus detection, spread prevention, and medical assistance

•This paper is a survey of the Machine Learning (ML) research done against COVID-19.•The paper is categorized into 3 main sections that cover various approaches of ML.•How ML techniques could aid with diagnosing the virus is reviewed in a section.•Reviewing numerous ways on how ML could be used for forecasting the spread of COVID-19.•Reviewing the integration of ML techniques done towards vaccine development.