As the world watches the outbreak of a novel coronovirus, epidemiologists are watching simulations of that outbreak in their computers, to try to predict what might happen next.
Scientists who use math and computers to simulate the course of epidemics are taking on the new coronavirus to try to predict how this global outbreak might evolve and how best to tackle it.could be done to take advantage of these modeling tools and the researchers' findings.
They've made similar efforts for past outbreaks, like Ebola and Zika. But this time around felt different, say people in the field. "That's a study that we did to try and give useful information to policy makers about what they would need to do with that strategy in order to have a good chance of controlling outbreaks," says Eggo.is that public health workers would need to trace a high percentage of a sick person's contacts to be effective in shutting down an outbreak quickly.
"Due to the natural history of the infection, people spend about five days from when they get infected to when they start showing symptoms," Eggo explains."In that time period, they can travel and won't be detected." The CDC typically gives an update during these calls on where things stand with the new coronavirus and talks about the questions it needs help with, says Viboud. She says one such call hadEpidemic modelers also have been communicating through the instant messaging platform Slack, as well as Twitter.Still, a computer model is only as good as the data that gets put into it.
"It's really that models help you think about things," says Lipsitch,"rather than that they tell you things for sure that you didn't know."
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