EPPIcenter researchers hosted in MIDAS talk
Dr. Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer and Dr. Saki Takahashi of the UCSF EPPIcenter presented on Sero-epidemiological modeling for COVID-19 control Oct 30, in a webinar hosted by the Midas Network.
MIDAS (Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study) is a global network of scientists and practitioners from academia, industry, government, and non-governmental agencies, who develop and use computational, statistical and mathematical models to improve the understanding of infectious disease dynamics as it relates to pathogenesis, transmission, effective control strategies, and forecasting.
The talk addressed some of the challenges in using seroprevalence data in tracking the transmission and epidemiology of SARS-Co VID 19, as well as the rapidly changing landscape as seroprevalence studies are being published. It was a deep dive into the development of methods and tools for sero-epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2, characterizing antibody responses, and the EPPIcenter’s sero-epidemiology project to better understand the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four of our current projects were discussed in detail-
The Community -wide SARS-CoV-2 testing in Bolinas in April of 2020- used PCR and two different serological assays to test a small coastal town with anticipated low seropositivity. The differences in results in those two tests is a lesson in the differences in sensitivity vs specificity in the context of COVID.
LIINC- Long-term Impact of Infection With Novel Coronavirus is creating a specimen bank of samples with carefully characterized clinical data from volunteers who suffered from acute COVID-19. The specimens are used to examine multiple questions involving the virologic, immunologic (antibody responses), and host factors involved in COVID-19, with a focus on understanding variability in the long-term immune response between individuals.
SCALE-IT Sero-surveillance for Continuous Actionable Intelligence of Transmission in the SF Bay Area
Using residual hospital samples, that are collected in care across 4 hospitals, we curate for people who have come in for non COVID care, and screen for antibodies.This sero-surveillance scheme can be used to monitor SARS-CoV-2 attack rates. This study gives a very granular view of the epidemic in near real time, with a particular emphasis on discovering the seroprevalence among asymptomatic patients.
MIDAS Urgent COVID-19 grant- This project aims to develop analytical frameworks to accurately model SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates from seroprevalence data, by incorporating individual-level immune dynamics into population-level epidemiological models .
We were so thrilled to have been hosted by the MIDAS network for this talk, which can be viewed in its entirety here.