The spread of a virtual disease in the online game World of Warcraft appeared to have relevance to understanding real world epidemics like COVID.
- Professor and Director of Doherty Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne
Experts at the Doherty Institute have updated their modelling to heighten caution around reopening for business and play.
We’re likely to see clusters of cases pop up and outbreaks that are hard to stamp out. But we can’t stay in lockdown forever. We have other options.
A new test, which can diagnose COVID-19 in 15 minutes, has been approved by the TGA. But it’s no silver bullet.
Testing and isolating cases only after they develop symptoms might not be enough to prevent further outbreaks of COVID-19. Sentinel surveillance, by testing randomly in the community, can go further.
Scott Morrison said it will be at least four weeks before any of the current restrictions are eased. There are a few boxes we want to tick before we can start to take a foot off the pedal.
There are three phases to Australia’s response plan. The ‘Initial Action’ stage, the ‘Targeted Action’ stage, and finally, the ‘Standdown’ stage. Right now, we’re in the first.
During a disease outbreak, lots of people can become infected in a short time and develop immunity, making it hard for the pathogen to spread.
Millions of people die or suffer from infectious diseases each year. Computer modelling can now help simulate the impact of any spreading disease.
When a high proportion of a community is immune it becomes hard for diseases to spread from person to person – a phenomenon known as herd immunity.
One of the biggest recent controversies in medicine involves the effectiveness of the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Governments have stockpiled the drug but many have raised doubts about its usefulness.
Predicting infectious disease outbreaks is a tricky task to begin with. And it’s made harder still by the fact that any individual outcome is subject to unpredictable – or stochastic – effects.
Viruses cause all kinds of infections from relatively mild cases of the flu to deadly outbreaks of Ebola. Clearly, not all viruses are equal and one of these differences is when you can infect others.
Even though we’ve had a whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine since the 1950s, the disease is proving difficult to control and beat. Dealing with its resurgence requires clear communication about the importance…
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