Modelling the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia

Synopsis

The COVID-19 pandemic has of course been the focus of much research over the past 2 years, with modellers worldwide attempting to shine light on the future, present, and past of the pandemic in their jurisdictions and beyond. In this talk I will discuss several projects involving modelling of COVID-19 in British Columbia, particularly focused on the impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions. I will introduce a Bayesian model incorporating rates of social distancing that we have applied in BC to gain insight on current distancing levels and make short-term forecasts. We use this model to think about the time frames over which we would expect to observe changes in population-level COVID-19 policy reflected in reported case counts, and therefore if we tend to assess the impact of such changes too soon. I will lastly discuss work which seeks to quantify the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 and the impact of interventions within long-term health care facilities in BC, using a hierarchical dynamic model.