Experiment to predict the spreading speed of influenza and infectious diseases

In "Experiments to predict the influenza epidemic rate" conducted with tens of thousands of volunteers, 43 million people, which is about 65% of the British population, are likely to be infected with influenza, how many infected people It is estimated that 886,000 people are likely to die.

Citizen science experiment predicts massive toll of flu pandemic on the UK | University of Cambridge
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/citizen-science-experiment-predicts-massive-toll-of-flu-pandemic-on-the-uk


The flu epidemic is truly dangerous. Experts from around the world are discussing when a deadly influenza epidemic will occur and the British government thinks that "the most dangerous thing for civilians" is influenza. If the influenza epidemic occurs, it is almost certain that the aftermath will reach the UK, but experiments are predicting the rate of the epidemic.

The experiment used for the influenza epidemic prediction model designed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Heiden & Tropical Medicine, which is designed based on approximately 30,000 volunteer data . This model was announced by Dr. Hannah Fry and Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, and the dataset used for predictive model design is the largest one. For details about the prediction model, please refer to the scientific journal "EpidemicsIt is also published in.

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"The value of the influenza epidemic prediction is completely dependent on the quality of the model," said Dr. Julia Gog, a professor of mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University. Continuously, Dr. Gog said, "The prediction of how the population infected with influenza fluctuates until now has been surprisingly limited, and in existing studies only relatively few population samples were used A predictive model is essential to understanding how viruses are infected and spread from person to person as people move and interact day by day. In this research, using the application as a volunteer By tracking, we track how human beings move and record what kind of people they encounter every day, so we aim to create the largest data set on infectious disease epidemics in the UK. " I am talking.

In addition, the prediction model created through the survey said that 43 million people in the UK with a population of about 656 million are likely to be infected with influenza, and there is a possibility that 886,000 people will die of infected people It has been suggested. The following figure visualizes how the infection of influenza spreads based on the prediction model, it shows that the closer the color is to red, the faster the influenza is prevalent, at least 14 It is becoming clear that influenza spreads all over the UK in the week.


"The experiment has been very successful in recruiting participants for research," said Dr. Petra Klepac, author of the paper. According to the researchers, the data that we were able to collect is incredibly rich compared to the conventional one, and it is important to explore how infectious diseases propagate "contact patterns of people and people" And "human motion patterns" and so on. Dr. Klepac says the data gathered from this survey will be a "golden standard" when modeling human movements and contact patterns.

The investigation of human movement and contact pattern will be continued through 2018, if you live in the UKApp StoreandGoogle PlayIt is also possible to install the application from above and participate in the survey as a subject. After the survey is finished, the collected data will be provided to all researchers in an anonymized state, so there is a possibility that it will help to make a more accurate prediction model in the future. In the research, I made a predictive model on influenza outbreaks, but the research team wrote, "This data is useful for estimating the spread of infectious diseases in the UK and other countries," he says.