Juliette Unwin

Infectious disease modelling for policy response

In this talk I will discuss three applications where I have used different types of infectious disease models to inform policy. I will begin by showing how Hawkes Processes can be used to model malaria transmission in countries close to elimination and how similar ideas were built on to model COVID-19 in Europe and the US. Then I will discuss how it’s not just important to consider primary impacts of disease transmission, but how secondary impacts should also be considered when responding to pandemics. Here I will show estimates of orphanhood and caregiver loss from the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I will draw on experiences from Ebola outbreak response to illustrate how collecting good data about cases can help inform contact tracing system responses.