Tomorrow Virtual Talk by Tanja Stadler: Understanding the epidemic spread of COVID-19 through analysis of Sars-CoV-2 genomes

11 May 2020

The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on January 30, 2020, after rapid spread from a few initial cases to thousands of cases across China and introductions to several other countries. On March 11, 2020, the WHO classified the outbreak as a pandemic. The first case in Switzerland was confirmed on February 25, 2020. The number of Swiss cases then increased rapidly. Upon the start of the lockdown in Switzerland on March 17, 2020, more than 3000 infections in Switzerland were confirmed. How did the virus spread across the globe? What are the transmission patterns within Switzerland? I will shed light on these questions by exploring information encoded in SARS-CoV-2 genomes in combination with data on confirmed cases. A quantification of transmission allows us to monitor epidemic spread and evaluate the impact of different public health measures.

Program(s)

Equal Opportunities

Yanpeng Li (UniGE A. Alekseev Group) thesis defense

Wendelin Werner elected to the Royal Society