Jeffrey Shaman - May 6, 2020

Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, "Simulation and projection of COVID-19 in the US"

Dr. Shaman described his group’s work on developing a metapopulation model that describes the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 and its application for inferring key epidemiological characteristics and projecting future outcomes. His team built a metapopulation network model, representing 375 cities in China during the period of January 10-23. The model separately represents documented and undocumented infections, as well as contagiousness for documented/undomented infections, outputting various parameters such as transmission rate, latency period, infectious period, relative transmssion rate, etc. The stimulations of the model showed that without transmission from undocumented cases, confirmed cases decrease 79%. The model-inference approach identified a 14% documentation rate prior to travel restrictions, and indicates that undocumented infections contribute substantially to COVID-19 transmission. The model was also applied to the United States and made projections with the parameters from the system, as well as projections of COVID-19 cases and deaths as individual states re-open (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.11...).