NBIA Colloquium by Samir Bhatt, Imperial College London

We would like to invite you the NBIA Colloquium

                     Friday, October 9 at 3:15 PM

Speaker: Samir Bhatt (Imperial College London)

Title: Comparing the responses of the UK, Sweden and Denmark to COVID-19

Abstract: The UK and Sweden are both among the top 5 worst affected European countries ranked by total per-capita mortality due to COVID-19. Sweden is held up as a model for non-mandatory control by some, while negatively compared with its neighbours by others. Here we explore the impacts of the different policies adopted on COVID-19 transmission in the UK, Sweden and Denmark, and present a counterfactual assessment of what might have been the impact of each of those countries adopting the others' policies. We use a Bayesian semi-mechanistic model which makes no assumptions about intervention mechanism or effectiveness to estimate the time-varying reproduction number from mortality data for those countries. We then use two approaches to evaluate counterfactual scenarios, both of which switch the transmission profile of one country with that from another from 13th March 2020, the date stringent interventions began to be implemented. We estimate the resultant effect of these changes on infections and deaths in each country. We find that mortality in the UK would have approximately doubled if the Swedish policy had been adopted, while Swedish mortality would have been more than halved had Sweden adopted either the UK or Danish strategy. Our analysis highlights that small changes in either the timing or effectiveness of interventions can have disproportionately large effects on total mortality in the context of a rapidly and exponentially growing epidemic.

Bio-sketch: Samir Bhatt did his PhD in Statistical Genetics, and subsequent post-doctoral work in Geostatistics at the University of Oxford. Since 2016 Samir has been an Associate Professor at Imperial College London. His focus has been on the development and application of inferential mathematical models to address policy-relevant questions about infectious diseases. His main areas of research are Malaria and emerging outbreaks. Methodologically, he is interested in Gaussian processes, machine learning, and stochastic processes.  

To participate on Friday, click on

https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/s/61333932427

The colloquium will be moderated by Evert van Nieuwenburg and we strongly encourage you to participate actively by asking questions during the talk. Evert will briefly remind you how this can be done just before the colloquium starts.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday!