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Tom Britton: Mathematical modelling of infectious disease outbreaks like covid-19

Time: Mon 2020-04-20 15.15 - 16.15

Location: Zoom: chalmers, Meeting ID: 658451394, Password: 040566

Participating: Tom Britton, Stockholms universitet

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Abstract

Mathematical models for the spread of infectious diseases are used to: better understand spreading mechanisms, determine if a big outbreak is likely to occur and how big it will be, determine if a disease will become endemic, and investigate how various preventive measures can reduce spreading hopefully preventing a major pandemic outbreak or make an endemic disease vanish. Making inference is harder than usual in that the basic events, transmissions, are rarely observed but instead proxies like onset of symptoms are recorded, and also by the fact that these events are dependent rather than independent (as is usually the case).

In the talk I will give an overview of the area with particular focus on emerging outbreaks, including illustrations from the current coronavirus outbreak.