Data Challenge Grantee Releases New Version of COVID-19 Scenario Analysis Tool
Earlier this year we were thrilled to award support to Bio Nano Consulting in association with the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (MRC GIDA) at Imperial College London to develop their COVID-19 Scenario Analysis Tool further.
Link to access the newly updated scenario analysis tool: Covidsim Site
What’s Rt you ask and why is this important?
It’s the reproductive number for the spread of a virus or disease — which also might not be so clear. In simple terms, it’s a way of rating a coronavirus or anything else that might be worried about catching. It’s the number of people (at a single point in time) that one infected person will pass their illness on to, on average. In a wider context — Measles has an R number of 15 in populations without immunity, without intervention, the common cold is between 2–3.
Why is this important? As explained by Azra Ghani, Professor in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London explains that “While we wait for the widespread roll-out of vaccines next year, epidemiological tools such as this can help users to understand the need for ongoing interventions to suppress transmission […] given the local context and hence avoid overwhelming the demands that COVID-19 could place on limited healthcare.”
Generally, Covidsim has been developed as a user-friendly software platform which enables government healthcare officials, public health-focused companies, and researchers to use epidemiological modelling to explore scenarios for COVID-19 transmission. A unique feature of this platform is that the model is calibrated daily to the country-level data with model parameters also updated based on current state-of-the-art knowledge. Forward simulation of the COVID-19 epidemic trajectory and healthcare demand can be undertaken to explore the impact of different non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in a way that is consistent with the current epidemic state.
Version 3, which was made possible by COVIDaction, expands the tool to a majority of countries globally (including Western Europe and the United States). This new version of the tool allows users to explore the effects of switching between intervention intensity levels by changing the value of the reproductive number, Rt. Users can specify multiple phases of intervention, each with their own value, to explore the impact on the COVID-19 epidemic trajectory and healthcare demands of different levels of NPIs. Users can also plot the effective reproductive number, Reff, which accounts for the impact of immunity on transmission.
Since its original launch in May, the web-based tool has been available to support public health decisions in 137 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) worldwide, attracting over 50,000 users to date. The new version of covidsim will support countries in assessing different epidemic trajectories as we move into 2021. This now includes all countries, with emerging second waves and ongoing epidemics happening across all income levels showing the need for careful planning in response to COVID-19.
Lastly, as noted by Oliver Watson at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Imperial College London, covidsim is also unique in its approach to “[…] estimating how much increasing population immunity has impacted the level of transmission — and thus how much of current epidemic trends are due to interventions and how much is due to the level of transmission that has already occurred.” Such research and functionality will be key going forward, in terms of understanding the impacts of vaccine uptake.
For updates, visit covidsim.org and follow @bionanoc, @MRC_Outbreak and @imperialcollege on Twitter.
