By Hans Kaper
The theme for the third day of the summer school on “Dynamics and Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic”—organized by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) and the Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN)—was modeling and simulation, with emphasis on COVID-19.
In the morning, participants discussed the report entitled “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand,” generated by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on March 16, 2020. The question of how this report became influential on public policy in the UK was of particular interest; the lockdown order was issued only a few days after the report was made public. Chris Jones (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) highlighted the critical role of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) —especially members Neil Ferguson (Imperial College in London) and Dominic Cummings—which had access to government officials and members of the scientific community. The fact that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 at an influential moment may have played a role as well. Also worth noting is the fact that the report is easy to read, the proposed mitigation scenarios are reasonable for widespread implementation, and the authors hit the “sweet spot” between science and policy.
Next, everyone watched a recording of a talk that biostatistician Daniela De Angelis (University of Cambridge) presented at the Isaac Newton Institute at Cambridge on May 22, 2020. De Angelis spoke about the development timeline and mentioned details of the simulator that is used to “nowcast” and forecast the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The simulator manifested from a code that was developed for the H1N1 virus pandemic in 2009; the government supported further development and the code was “ready” to go when COVID-19 hit. The code employs an age-structured susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model, and parameters are updated as data become available.
During lunch, the students “visited” with the mentors. Afterwards, they partook in an interactive session on behavior and experiences in group activities (both in person and online). A tai chi session provided a welcome break, and participants spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring three pre-selected epidemic simulators. The evening’s homework assignment asked them to investigate the simulators, comment on their capabilities, and try them out.
Hans Kaper, founding chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Mathematics of Planet Earth and editor-in-chief of SIAM News, is affiliate faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University.