Concerning the current outbreak, using bioinformatics
My personal approach to something like this is to first try to reproduce existing work in order to learn to use relevant tools and understand the concepts involved. Then as you get more comfortable with the subject matter, you may spot an opportunity to add value. 

If you'd like to get started with the phylogenomics side of things, you can use this public workspace developed by the viral genomics group at the Broad Institute, which includes viral genome sequences from NCBI SRA as well as some workflows for doing genome assembly and quality control: https://app.terra.bio/#workspaces/pathogen-genomic-surveillance/COVID-19