This short lecture gives a primer on some methodological aspects of outbreak analysis. It includes content on the estimation of key delays (e.g. incubation period, serial interval) and the characterisation of the underlying distributions, the estimation of growth rates, doubling times, of the basic reproduction number and simple short-term forecasting. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: About this document Contributors Thibaut Jombart: initial version Contributions are welcome via pull requests. ...

Beyond the availability of data and methods, reproducible science requires the traceability of analyses. Whether it is for yourself or for collaborators, as series of tools and good practices can facilitate your work flow, simplify analyses, and prevent the loss of data and results. This lecture provides an introduction to reproducibility using R. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: Related packages knitr knitr provides excellent resources for literate programming mixing R with LaTeX or markdown. ...

Beyond the availability of data and methods, and the use of good practices for reproducible science, the outbreak response context poses a number of practical challenges for data analysis. In this lecture, we introduce tools which can help address some of these challenges, and create robust, efficient, and more easily deployable data analytics pipelines using R. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: Alternatively, you can view these slides directly on google slides. ...

This practical simulates the early assessment and reconstruction of an Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak. It introduces various aspects of analysis of the early stage of an outbreak, including contact tracing data, epicurves, growth rate estimation from log-linear models, and more refined estimates of transmissibility. A follow-up practical will provide an introduction to transmission chain reconstruction using outbreaker2. A novel EVD outbreak in Ankh, Republic of Morporkia A new EVD outbreak has been notified in the small city of Ankh, located in the Northern, rural district of the Republic of Morporkia. ...

This short lecture explores the methodologies to produce short term projections of incidence based on estimated transmissibility of a pathogen. It covers various aspects around projections, forecasting and predictions. The example of the dynamics of Ebola is used. Slides PDF slides (click the image below) PPTX slides (click the image below) About this document Contributors Pierre Nouvellet: initial version Contributions are welcome via pull requests. ...

Eliminating tuberculosis (TB) is now a priority in the Global Health agenda. Is it achievable? How and when could this happen? Though still uncertain, it is an ongoing discussion in the field. In this practical, we will illustrate important concepts of TB epidemiology with a simple compartmental model and assess the interventions required to achieve elimination thresholds and End TB goals set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Core concepts The following concepts will be developed during the practical: ...