演講者：Dr. Jorge P. Rodriguez
               Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC)

日　期：2024 年 01 月 03 日（星期三）14:30

地　點：國立高雄大學理學院 408 室

講　題：New questions on epidemic spreading suggested by the COVID-19 pandemic

摘   要：

The outbreak of COVID-19, reaching the level of pandemic at the beginning of 2020, represented a major shift on the answers requested to epidemic spreading models. For example, hospital capacity, real contacts and non-pharmaceutical interventions were not frequently accounted for in the literature, while the pandemic highlighted their importance. In this talk, I will present three works where we aimed at addressing some of these questions. First, the presence of undetected cases in the first half of 2020 implied a high uncertainty on the evolution of the pandemic when restrictions would be lifted; we quantified the risk of secondary waves of COVID-19 in Balearic Islands after estimating the prevalence on the first wave. Second, we created a digital twin of five Spanish cities, reproducing the contacts among the population within them in 6 interaction layers (homes, schools, universities, nursing homes, work and community); we used those digital cities to calibrate the spread of COVID-19 on them and quantify the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions through a counter-factual analysis. Finally, we introduced a generic model of coupling between infectious diseases, demonstrating the synchronization of their peaks in both competitive and cooperative scenarios, particularizing it for the interaction between COVID-19 and seasonal flu.

References:

[1] VM Eguíluz, J Fernández-Gracia, JP Rodríguez, JM Pericas, CJ Melian. Risk of secondary infection waves of COVID-19 in an insular region: the case of the Balearic Islands, Spain, Frontiers in Medicine (2020).
[2] JP Rodríguez, A Aleta, Y Moreno, Digital cities and the spread of COVID-19: Characterizing the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions in five cities in Spain, Frontiers in Public Health (2023).
[3] JP Rodríguez, VM Eguíluz, Coupling between infectious diseases leads to synchronization of their dynamics, Chaos (2023).