ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0919-6401
Current Organisation
The University of Edinburgh
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Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 07-03-2012
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2021
Publisher: Microbiology Society
Date: 23-06-2010
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 09-09-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.09.07.20189597
Abstract: Controlling the regional re-emergence of SARS-CoV-2 after its initial spread in ever-changing personal contact networks and disease landscapes is a challenging task. In a landscape context, contact opportunities within and between populations are changing rapidly as lockdown measures are relaxed and a number of social activities re-activated. Using an in idual-based metapopulation model, we explored the efficacy of different control strategies across an urban-rural gradient in Wales, UK. Our model shows that isolation of symptomatic cases, or regional lockdowns in response to local outbreaks, have limited efficacy unless the overall transmission rate is kept persistently low. Additional isolation of non-symptomatic infected in iduals, who may be detected by effective test and trace strategies, is pivotal to reduce the overall epidemic size over a wider range of transmission scenarios. We define an ‘urban-rural gradient in epidemic size’ as a correlation between regional epidemic size and connectivity within the region, with more highly connected urban populations experiencing relatively larger outbreaks. For interventions focused on regional lockdowns, the strength of such gradients in epidemic size increased with higher travel frequencies, indicating a reduced efficacy of the control measure in the urban regions under these conditions. When both non-symptomatic and symptomatic in iduals are isolated or regional lockdown strategies are enforced, we further found the strongest urban-rural epidemic gradients at high transmission rates. This effect was reversed for strategies targeted at symptomatics only. Our results emphasise the importance of test-and-tracing strategies and maintaining low transmission rates for efficiently controlling COVID19 spread, both at landscape scale and in urban areas. The spread of infectious diseases is the outcome of contact patterns and involves source-sink dynamics of how infectious in iduals spread the disease through pools of susceptible in iduals. Control strategies that aim to reduce disease spread often need to accept ongoing transmission chains and therefore, may not work equally well in different scenarios of how in iduals and populations are connected to each other. To understand the efficacy of different control strategies to contain the spread of COVID19 across gradients of urban and rural populations, we simulated a large range of different control strategies in response to regional COVID19 outbreaks, involving regional lockdown and the isolation in iduals that express symptoms and those that developed not symptoms but may contribute to disease transmission. Our results suggest that isolation of asymptomatic in iduals through intensive test-and-tracing is important for efficiently reducing the epidemic size. Regional lockdowns and the isolation of symptomatic cases only are of limited efficacy for reducing the epidemic size, unless overall transmission rate is kept persistently low. Moreover, we found high overall transmission rates to result in relatively larger epidemics in urban than in rural communities for these control strategies, emphasising the importance of keeping transmission rates constantly low in addition to regional measures to avoid the disease spread at large scale.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-02-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-03-2015
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 12-02-2016
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 17-12-2019
DOI: 10.7554/ELIFE.45833
Abstract: Quantifying pathogen transmission in multi-host systems is difficult, as exemplified in bovine tuberculosis (bTB) systems, but is crucial for control. The agent of bTB, Mycobacterium bovis, persists in cattle populations worldwide, often where potential wildlife reservoirs exist. However, the relative contribution of different host species to bTB persistence is generally unknown. In Britain, the role of badgers in infection persistence in cattle is highly contentious, despite decades of research and control efforts. We applied Bayesian phylogenetic and machine-learning approaches to bacterial genome data to quantify the roles of badgers and cattle in M. bovis infection dynamics in the presence of data biases. Our results suggest that transmission occurs more frequently from badgers to cattle than vice versa (10.4x in the most likely model) and that within-species transmission occurs at higher rates than between-species transmission for both. If representative, our results suggest that control operations should target both cattle and badgers.
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 25-07-2019
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 12-2020
Abstract: Controlling the regional re-emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) after its initial spread in ever-changing personal contact networks and disease landscapes is a challenging task. In a landscape context, contact opportunities within and between populations are changing rapidly as lockdown measures are relaxed and a number of social activities re-activated. Using an in idual-based metapopulation model, we explored the efficacy of different control strategies across an urban–rural gradient in Wales, UK. Our model shows that isolation of symptomatic cases or regional lockdowns in response to local outbreaks have limited efficacy unless the overall transmission rate is kept persistently low. Additional isolation of non-symptomatic infected in iduals, who may be detected by effective test-and-trace strategies, is pivotal to reducing the overall epidemic size over a wider range of transmission scenarios. We define an ‘urban–rural gradient in epidemic size' as a correlation between regional epidemic size and connectivity within the region, with more highly connected urban populations experiencing relatively larger outbreaks. For interventions focused on regional lockdowns, the strength of such gradients in epidemic size increased with higher travel frequencies, indicating a reduced efficacy of the control measure in the urban regions under these conditions. When both non-symptomatic and symptomatic in iduals are isolated or regional lockdown strategies are enforced, we further found the strongest urban–rural epidemic gradients at high transmission rates. This effect was reversed for strategies targeted at symptomatic in iduals only. Our results emphasize the importance of test-and-trace strategies and maintaining low transmission rates for efficiently controlling SARS-CoV-2 spread, both at landscape scale and in urban areas.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 24-04-2009
Abstract: Sheep retroviruses can be used to map the selective preferences of early farmers and trace livestock movements across Europe.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 07-2000
DOI: 10.1017/S0031182099006095
Abstract: We review the literature on parameter values relevant to the epidemiology of strongyle nematode infections of domestic sheep. Information is sub ided by parasite genus, country of origin and climate type. While field observations have been made in a large number of countries, the bulk of studies under controlled conditions have been conducted in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. For these countries, experiments and parameters are interpreted in terms of a previously published model of nematode dynamics, and are used to calculate the basic reproduction number. Average values range from less than 6 for Haemonchus contortus in New Zealand and a winter rainfall region of Australia, to more than 16 for Ostertagia circumcincta in New Zealand and the UK. Additional considerations of the effects of climate and the annual replacement of host stock show that for conditions favourable for parasite transmission this is a robust indicator of parasite epidemiology. When climate variation and annual replacement are added to the model, it is shown to reasonably describe the qualitative behaviour of an experimental data set, indicating it to be a useful tool for further investigation of some of the underlying assumptions of sheep–nematode dynamics.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2012
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2013
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Rowland Kao.