Motivation At which time point during an outbreak of a person-to-person transmitted disease can one declare the outbreak as having ended? Answering this question can be important in order to calm the population, re-attract tourists, stop export bans or reduce alertness status. The current WHO method for answering the above question is as follows: a period of two times the longest possible incubation time needs to pass without observing additional cases, before the outbreak can be declared as being over. ...

This practical is the second part of the response to a simulated Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak taking place in the city of Ankh, Republic of Morporkia. While the first part focussed on early assessments of transmissibility, this part explores more methodological options for estimating transmissibility, and provides an introduction to outbreak reconstruction using outbreaker2. An update on the EVD outbreak in Ankh, Republic of Morporkia After some rather concerning preliminary results on the new EVD outbreak in the city of Ankh, Republic of Morporkia, Public Health Morporkia (PHM) has sent you updates of the linelists and contact data. ...

This lecture introduces general concepts pertaining to phylogenetic tree reconstruction, as well as the main approaches used for building trees, including distance-based, maximum parsimony, and maximum likelihood methods. It also discusses phylogenetic uncertainty, bootstrap, and some caveats and bad practices. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: About this document Contributors Thibaut Jombart: initial version Contributions are welcome via pull requests. The source files of this lecture can be found here. ...

This short lecture gives a primer on some methodological aspects of outbreak reconstruction using outbreaker2. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: About this document Contributors Thibaut Jombart: initial version Finlay Campbell: figure on *outbreaker2*’s contact model Contributions are welcome via pull requests. The source file can be found here. Legal stuff License: CC-BY Copyright: Thibaut Jombart, 2017

This lecture is about Vector Borne Diseases (VBD) modelling. The aim is to gain a general understanding on the role of modelling on the main vector borne diseases, with special enphasis on Malaria, Chagas and Zika. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: About this document Contributors Zulma Cucunuba & Pierre Nouvellet: initial version Contributions are welcome via pull requests. Legal stuff License: CC-BY Copyright: Zulma Cucunuba & Pierre Nouvellet, 2017

This short lecture gives a primer on how modelling can help inform public health response. It focuses on few examples where modelling has been used to integrate various types of information and help implement control or raise situational awarness. Slides Click on the image below to access the slides: About this document Contributors Pierre Nouvellet: initial version Contributions are welcome via pull requests. The source file can be found here. ...