COVID-19 Research Honoured by PM
Since quite early on in Alert Level 4 last year (sometime in April), one of our Senior Researchers, Emily Harvey, has been part of the team from Te Pūnaha Matatini (and also a Principal Investigator in that team) modelling the effects of COVID-19 pandemic to inform government policy.
As part of this work, Emily has been co-leading a project to create an Aotearoa specific individual-level network contagion model. The underlying interaction network is built from Statistics NZ linked micro-data and represents the ~5million people who live here, and the contexts in which they interact and could spread COVID-19, including homes, workplaces, schools, and community events. Once the network is constructed it is combined with a stochastic contagion process and representations of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as Alert Level changes and test-trace-isolate strategies. This level of individual and community heterogeneity, combined with having an explicit representation of transmission processes, allows policy makers to test scenarios and investigate potential future impacts, as well as giving more detail on who would be impacted under different policy choices or modelling assumptions.
In April this year, the team from Te Pūnaha Matatini were recognised with the award of the 2020 Te Puiaki Pūtaiao Matua a te Pirimia The Prime Minister’s Science Prize, the premier award for science that is transformational in its impact. This modelling work has provided nuanced, timely, and invaluable advice to the government throughout the past year, and is continuing through 2021 with funding from MBIE. Market Economics is very proud of Emily’s contribution to this prestigious science research prize.
The network modelling team has also received funding through to 2023 from the Health Research Council to work on addressing equity concerns in the existing modelling and response, including investigating data quality issues and biases, and improving communication of modelling results to wider stakeholders than central government.
