Related papers: Optimizing testing policies for detecting COVID-19…
I employ a simple mathematical model of an epidemic process to evaluate how four basic quantities: the reproduction number (R), the numbers of sensitive (S) and infectious individuals(I), and total community size (N) affect strategies to…
Background: Rapid testing for an infection is paramount during a pandemic to prevent continued viral spread and excess morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to determine whether alternative testing strategies based on sample pooling can…
Background: Early detection and isolation of COVID-19 patients are essential for successful implementation of mitigation strategies and eventually curbing the disease spread. With a limited number of daily COVID-19 tests performed in every…
We model further development of the COVID-19 epidemic in the UK given the current data and assuming different scenarios of handling the epidemic. In this research, we further extend the stochastic model suggested in \cite{us} and…
Estimating the prevalence of a disease is necessary for evaluating and mitigating risks of its transmission within or between populations. Estimates that consider how prevalence changes with time provide more information about these risks…
When an infectious disease strikes a population, the number of newly reported cases is often the only available information that one can obtain during early stages of the outbreak. An important goal of early outbreak analysis is to obtain a…
The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the novel corona virus has an exponential rate of infection. COVID-19 is particularly notorious as the onset of symptoms in infected patients are usually delayed and there exists a large…
Motivated by COVID-19, we develop and analyze a simple stochastic model for a disease spread in human population. We track how the number of infected and critically ill people develops over time in order to estimate the demand that is…
Timely and rapid diagnoses are core to informing on optimum interventions that curb the spread of COVID-19. The use of medical images such as chest X-rays and CTs has been advocated to supplement the Reverse-Transcription Polymerase Chain…
An outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus is ongoing from December 2019. As of July 22, 2020, it has caused an epidemic outbreak with more than 15 million confirmed infections and above 6 hundred thousand reported…
During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and lateral flow device (LFD) tests were frequently deployed to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2. Many of these tests were singleplex, and only tested for the presence of a…
Sample pooling consists in combining samples from multiple individuals into a single pool that is then tested using a unique test-kit. A positive test means that at least one individual within the pool is infected. Here, we propose an…
In their response to the COVID-19 outbreak, governments face the dilemma to balance public health and economy. Mobility plays a central role in this dilemma because the movement of people enables both economic activity and virus spread. We…
Understanding the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been one of the most pressing problems of the recent past. Network models present a potent approach to studying such spreading phenomena because of their ability to represent complex social…
The group testing problem asks for efficient pooling schemes and algorithms that allow to screen moderately large numbers of samples for rare infections. The goal is to accurately identify the infected samples while conducting the least…
This study investigates the utilization of various mathematical models for comprehending and managing outbreaks of infectious diseases, with a specific focus on how different distributions of incubation times influence predictions regarding…
We consider two closely related problems: anomaly detection in sensor networks and testing for infections in human populations. In both problems, we have $n$ nodes (sensors, humans), and each node exhibits an event of interest (anomaly,…
With the covid-19 pandemic still ongoing and an enormous amount of test data available, the lessons learned over the last two years need to be developed to a point where they can provide understanding for tackling new variants and future…
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to improve the modeling, estimation, and prediction of how infectious diseases spread. SEIR-like models have been particularly successful in providing accurate short-term predictions. This study…
Surveillance of diseases in a pandemic is an important part of public health policy. Diagnostic testing at the individual level is often infeasible due to resource constraints. To circumvent these constraints, group testing can be applied.…