Introduction
The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), supported by The Alan Turing Institute and Royal Statistical Society (RSS), was established in May 2020 to provide evidence-based, objective analysis, assessment and advice to inform local and national decision making in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its immediate term objective was to break the chains of COVID-19 transmission to protect public health as part of the evolving health protection ecosystem in the UK. The JBC brought together globally leading epidemiological expertise with data science to provide analysis and insights on the drivers and risk factors of virus transmission. In October 2021, the JBC became part of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
The Challenge
Working with internationally leading partners (including mathematicians from CERN, AI researchers from The Alan Turing Institute, leading epidemiologists, genomic sequencing SMEs, the NHS, the Office for National Statistics, and major technology providers), the JBC sought to provide insights into the factors that affect the spread of COVID-19, to identify the most significant drivers of transmission, and to understand the factors behind localised increases in infection rates and the potential consequences for local health care systems.
COVID-19 surveillance and immunity studies
What We Did
Our founder Jillur Quddus led an expert team of globally leading mathematicians, epidemiologists, AI research fellows and technologists, responsible for rapidly developing bleeding-edge emerging infectious disease modelling systems. By leveraging discrete mathematics, including graph theory, in combination with the latest advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, our systems modelled the transmission of COVID-19 in near real-time, and simulated the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdown events.
Enduring SARS-CoV-2 prevalence risk factors
Key Outcomes
Our innovative mathematical models enabled the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) to identify both known and previously unknown clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with the ability to understand the key drivers of transmission within and between localised clusters, and the likely impact of NPIs. Furthermore, the solutions that we delivered were governed by the architectural principles of interoperability, reusability and extensibility, meaning that they can be seamlessly reused by the UKHSA in response to future pandemics.