PIMS - UBC Math Biology Seminar: Jude Kong

The COVID-19 pandemic has passed its initial peak in most countries in the world, making it ripe to assess whether the basic reproduction number (R0) is different across countries and what demographic, social, and environmental factors other than interventions characterize vulnerability to the virus. In this talk, I will show the association (linear and non-linear) between COVID-19 R0 across countries and 17 demographic, social, and environmental variables obtained using a generalized additive model. Moreover, I will present a mathematical model of COVID-19 that we designed and used to explore the effects of adopting various vaccination and relaxation strategies on the COVID-19 epidemiological long-term projections in Ontario. Our findings are able to provide public health bodies with important insights on the effect of adopting various mitigation strategies, thereby guiding them in the decision-making process.