Publications related to Pandemic

Epidemicity indices and reproduction numbers from infectious disease data in connected human populations

Andrea Rinaldo, Cristiano Trevisin, Lorenzo Mari, Marino Gatto

We focus on distinctive data-driven measures of the fate of ongoing epidemics. The relevance of our pursuit is suggested by recent results proving that the short-term temporal evolution of infection spread is described by an epidemicity index related to th ...

2024

Biases in Information Selection and Processing: Survey Evidence from the Pandemic

Andreas Fuster

We conduct two survey experiments to study which information people choose to consume and how it affects their beliefs. In the first experiment, respondents choose between optimistic and pessimistic article headlines related to the COVID-19 pandemic and ar ...

2024

Challenges of COVID-19 Case Forecasting in the US, 2020-2021

Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Pan Xu, Weitong Zhang, Wei Cao, Myungjin Kim, Shan Yu, Xinyi Li, Lei Gao

During the COVID-19 pandemic, forecasting COVID-19 trends to support planning and response was a priority for scientists and decision makers alike. In the United States, COVID-19 forecasting was coordinated by a large group of universities, companies, and ...

Public Library Science2024

Monitoring an Emergent Pathogen at Low Incidence in Wastewater Using qPCR: Mpox in Switzerland

Tamar Kohn, Timothy R. Julian

Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a complementary approach to clinical case-based surveillance of emergent diseases and can help identify regions with infected people to prioritize clinical surveillance strategies. However, tracking emergent diseases in ...

2024

Sporadic type VI secretion in seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, Nicolas René Chiaruttini, Alexis Joseph Proutière, Loriane Bader, Lisa Christina Metzger, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr, Sandrine Natacha Isaac

Vibrio cholerae is a pathogen that causes disease in millions of people every year by colonizing the small intestine and then secreting the potent cholera toxin. How the pathogen overcomes the colonization barrier created by the host’s natural microbiota i ...

2023

Back-to-Africa introductions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the main cause of tuberculosis in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Jacques Fellay, Zhi Ming Xu

In settings with high tuberculosis (TB) endemicity, distinct genotypes of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) often differ in prevalence. However, the factors leading to these differences remain poorly understood. Here we studied the MTBC populat ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2023

Single nucleotide polymorphism determines constitutive versus inducible type VI secretion in Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, Alexis Joseph Proutière, Loriane Bader, Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr, Milena Jadwiga Jaskolska

Vibrio cholerae is a well-studied human pathogen that is also a common inhabitant of marine habitats. In both environments, the bacterium is subject to interbacterial competition. A molecular nanomachine that is often involved in such competitive behavior ...

2022

Two defence systems eliminate plasmids from seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, David William Adams, Milena Jadwiga Jaskolska

Horizontal gene transfer can trigger rapid shifts in bacterial evolution. Driven by a variety of mobile genetic elements—in particular bacteriophages and plasmids—the ability to share genes within and across species underpins the exceptional adaptability o ...

2022

Identification of broad anti-coronavirus chemical agents for repurposing against SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern

Gerardo Turcatti, Fabien Kuttler, Michael Bauer, Liliane Yang

Endemic human coronaviruses (hCoVs) 229E and OC43 cause respiratory disease with recurrent infections, while severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 spreads across the world with impact on health and societies. Here, we report an image-based multicy ...

2022

The molecular treasure box of environmental Vibrio cholerae strains

Natalia Carolina Drebes Dorr

Cholera pandemics have been affecting humankind for centuries and are still considered a major public health problem, especially in regions around the world with poor access to clean water and sanitation. Cholera pandemics are caused by a specific lineage ...

EPFL2021

Epidemic mitigation by statistical inference from contact tracing data

Florent Gérard Krzakala, Lenka Zdeborová, Maria Refinetti, Indaco Biazzo, Giovanni Catania

Contact tracing is an essential tool to mitigate the impact of a pandemic, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to achieve efficient and scalable contact tracing in real time, digital devices can play an important role. While a lot of attention has been ...

National Academy of Sciences2021

Wastewater monitoring outperforms case numbers as a tool to track COVID-19 incidence dynamics when test positivity rates are high

Tamar Kohn, Xavier Fernandez Cassi, Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Federica Cariti, Alex Tunas Corzon, Timothy R. Julian, Carola Bänziger

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been shown to coincide with, or anticipate, confirmed COVID-19 case numbers. During periods with high test positivity rates, however, case numbers may be underreported, whereas wastewater does not suffer from this li ...

2021

A mathematical dashboard for the analysis of Italian COVID-19 epidemic data

Alfio Quarteroni, Luca Dede', Nicola Parolini

An analysis of the COVID-19 epidemic is proposed on the basis of the epiMOX dashboard (publicly accessible at ) that deals with data of the epidemic trends and outbreaks in Italy from late February 2020. Our analysis provides an immediate appreciation of t ...

Wiley2021

How to detect and reduce potential sources of biases in studies of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Mats Julius Stensrud

In response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, public health scientists have produced a large and rapidly expanding body of literature that aims to answer critical questions, such as the proportion of the population in a geographic area that h ...

2021

Volunteer contributions to Wikipedia increased during COVID-19 mobility restrictions

Robert West, Manoel Horta Ribeiro

Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia ever created, is a global initiative driven by volunteer contributions. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and mobility restrictions ensued across the globe, it was unclear whether contributions to Wikipedia would decr ...

Nature Portfolio2021

Who Is Listening? Spokesperson Effect on Communicating Social and Physical Distancing Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Robert West, Andreas Oliver Spitz, Ahmad Abu-Akel

Effective communication during a pandemic, such as the current COVID-19 crisis, can save lives. At the present time, social and physical distancing measures are the lead strategy in combating the spread of COVID-19. In this study, a survey was administered ...

Frontiers Media2021

Digital proximity tracing on empirical contact networks for pandemic control

Marcel Salathé

Digital contact tracing is a relevant tool to control infectious disease outbreaks, including the COVID-19 epidemic. Early work evaluating digital contact tracing omitted important features and heterogeneities of real-world contact patterns influencing con ...

Nature Research2021

Transgenic Model Systems Have Revolutionized the Study of Disease

Alexandre Gauthier Aurèle Mayran, Christopher Chase Bolt

The current pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected most of the world in a profound way. As an indirect consequence, the general public has been put into direct contact with the research process, almost ...

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC2021

A scenario modeling pipeline for COVID-19 emergency planning

Francisco Javier Perez Saez, Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused strain on health systems worldwide due to its high mortality rate and the large portion of cases requiring critical care and mechanical ventilation. During these uncertain times, public health decision makers, ...

Nature Portfolio2021

Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Agents Based on Multivalent Inhibitors of Viral Infectivity

Francesco Stellacci

The ongoing pandemic of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), caused by the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2), highlights the need for broad-spectrum antiviral drugs. In this Essay, it is argued that such agents alrea ...

WILEY2021