Abstract

Daniela De Angelis directs a Cambridge team of statisticians working on “Real time monitoring of the SARS -COV2 pandemic”, which has provided the official Public Health England real time estimates and projections of the state of the pandemic in England. Research on developing the statistical model for the COVID -19 pandemic first began in response to the 2009 swine influenza pandemic, in collaboration with Public Health England (PHE). The aim was to develop models for estimating and predicting the spread of a potential influenza pandemic, using information from multiple data sources available from PHE . Key outputs of this work were the modelling and statistical methodology, and computer code, to implement a model for the spread of influenza within a population and across geographical areas. Using data from different streams accumulating over the course of the epidemic, the model could be used to provide timely estimation and prediction of key epidemic quantities. In a number of publications, Daniela and her team have investigated extensions to the model, including different approaches to include regional information and alternative algorithms to reduce the computational time to produce results in a timely manner.