From the 100 Day Mission to 100 lines of software development: how to improve early outbreak analytics.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, considerable advances have been made to improve epidemic preparedness by accelerating diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine development. However, we argue that it is crucial to make equivalent efforts in the field of outbreak analytics to help ensure reliable, evidence-based decision making. To explore the challenges and key priorities in the field of outbreak analytics, the Epiverse-TRACE initiative brought together a multidisciplinary group of experts, including field epidemiologists, data scientists, academics, and software engineers from public health institutions across multiple countries.

The daily updated Dutch national database on COVID-19 epidemiology, vaccination and sewage surveillance.

The Dutch national open database on COVID-19 has been incrementally expanded since its start on 30 April 2020 and now includes datasets on symptoms, tests performed, individual-level positive cases and deaths, cases and deaths among vulnerable populations, settings of transmission, hospital and ICU admissions, SARS-CoV-2 variants, viral loads in sewage, vaccinations and the effective reproduction number. This data is collected by municipal health services, laboratories, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, vaccination providers and citizens and is cleaned, analysed and published, mostly daily, by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands, using automated scripts. Because these datasets cover the key aspects of the pandemic and are available at detailed geographical level, they are essential to gain a thorough understanding of the past and current COVID-19 epidemiology in the Netherlands.

The timing of parental unemployment, insurance and children's education.

The timing of parental unemployment can impact children's educational transitions. Previous research has mostly examined transitions to higher education, proxying timing in relation to children's age and often focusing on selective populations. We study unemployment's intergenerational effects at multiple stages of the educational career, and define timing relative to important crossroads within and across school years for a broader population of children.

Empirical evidence of transmission over a school-household network for SARS-CoV-2; exploration of transmission pairs stratified by primary and secondary school.

Background: Children play a key role in the transmission of many infectious diseases. They have many of their close social encounters at home or at school. We hypothesized that most of the transmission of respiratory infections among children occur in these two settings and that transmission patterns can be predicted by a bipartite network of schools and households.

Disentangling the Long-term Effects of Divorce Circumstances on Father-Child Closeness in Adulthood: A Mediation Analysis.

Many studies have shown that the relationship between nonresidential fathers and their children in youth has a lasting influence on their relationship in adulthood. Comparatively less is known about the process through which divorce affects father-child relationships. We assess if and how the divorce circumstances of interparental conflict, the presence of new partners, and geographical distance between parents affect nonresidential father-child closeness in adulthood.

Competition between thermal and surfactant-induced Marangoni flow in evaporating sessile droplets.

Hypothesis: Thermal Marangoni flow in evaporating sessile water droplets is much weaker in experiments than predicted theoretically. Often this is attributed to surfactant contamination, but there have not been any in-depth analyses that consider the full fluid and surfactant dynamics. It is expected that more insight into this problem can be gained by using numerical models to analyze the interplay between thermal Marangoni flow and surfactant dynamics in terms of dimensionless parameters.

Impact analysis of rotavirus vaccination in various geographic regions in Western Europe.

Background: Universal mass vaccination (UMV) against rotavirus has been implemented in many but not all European countries. This study investigated the impact of UMV on rotavirus incidence trends by comparing European countries with UMV: Belgium, England/Wales and Germany versus countries without UMV: Denmark and the Netherlands.

Methods: For this observational retrospective cohort study, time series data (2001-2016) on rotavirus detections, meteorological factors and population demographics were collected.

Absorption of surfactant-laden droplets into porous media: A numerical study.

Hypothesis: Droplets can absorb into permeable substrates due to capillarity. It is hypothesized that the contact line dynamics influence this process and that an unpinned contact line results in slower absorption than a pinned contact line, since the contact area between the droplet and the substrate will decrease over time for the former. Furthermore, it is expected that surfactants can be used to accelerate the absorption.

Occupation- and age-associated risk of SARS-CoV-2 test positivity, the Netherlands, June to October 2020.

High coronavirus incidence has prompted the Netherlands to implement a second lockdown. To elucidate the epidemic's development preceding this second wave, we analysed weekly test positivity in public test locations by population subgroup between 1 June and 17 October 2020. Hospitality and public transport workers, driving instructors, hairdressers and aestheticians had higher test positivity compared with a reference group of individuals without a close-contact occupation.

Marangoni circulation in evaporating droplets in the presence of soluble surfactants.

Hypothesis: Soluble surfactants in evaporating sessile droplets can cause a circulatory Marangoni flow. However, it is not straightforward to predict for what cases this vortical flow arises. It is hypothesized that the occurrence of Marangoni circulation can be predicted from the values of a small number of dimensionless parameters.

The evaporation of surfactant-laden droplets: A comparison between contact line models.

Hypothesis: There are two different sharp-interface models for moving contact lines: slip models and precursor film models. While both models predict a mostly constant contact angle during the evaporation of pure droplets, it is expected that they behave differently when surfactants are present, because of the inherent dissimilarities in their respective interface definitions.

Simulations: Both contact line models are numerically implemented using lubrication theory to analyze evaporating droplets.

Family, Firms, and Fertility: A Study of Social Interaction Effects.

Research has indicated that fertility spreads through social networks and attributed this phenomenon to social interaction effects. It remains unclear, however, whether the findings of previous studies reflect the direct influence of network partners or contextual and selection factors, such as shared environment and common background characteristics. The present study uses instrumental variables to improve the identification of social interaction effects on fertility.

Improved inference of time-varying reproduction numbers during infectious disease outbreaks.

Accurate estimation of the parameters characterising infectious disease transmission is vital for optimising control interventions during epidemics. A valuable metric for assessing the current threat posed by an outbreak is the time-dependent reproduction number, i.e.

Using flexible methods to determine risk factors for ventilator-associated pneumonia in the Netherlands.

Seven hospitals participated in the Dutch national surveillance for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and its risk factors. We analysed time-independent and time-dependent risk factors for VAP using the standard Cox regression and the flexible Weighted Cumulative Effects method (WCE) that evaluates both current and past exposures. The prospective surveillance of intensive care patients aged ≥16 years and ventilated ≥48 hours resulted in the inclusion of 940 primary ventilation periods, comprising 7872 ventilation days.

Updated cost-effectiveness and risk-benefit analysis of two infant rotavirus vaccination strategies in a high-income, low-endemic setting.

Background And Objective: Since 2013, a biennial rotavirus pattern has emerged in the Netherlands with alternating high and low endemic years and a nearly 50% reduction in rotavirus hospitalization rates overall, while infant rotavirus vaccination has remained below 1% throughout. As the rotavirus vaccination cost-effectiveness and risk-benefit ratio in high-income settings is highly influenced by the total rotavirus disease burden, we re-evaluated two infant vaccination strategies, taking into account this recent change in rotavirus epidemiology.

Methods: We used updated rotavirus disease burden estimates derived from (active) surveillance to evaluate (1) a targeted strategy with selective vaccination of infants with medical risk conditions (prematurity, low birth weight, or congenital conditions) and (2) universal vaccination including all infants.

Using Multiple Pharmacovigilance Models Improves the Timeliness of Signal Detection in Simulated Prospective Surveillance.

Introduction: Prospective pharmacovigilance aims to rapidly detect safety concerns related to medical products. The exposure model selected for pharmacovigilance impacts the timeliness of signal detection. However, in most real-life pharmacovigilance studies, little is known about which model correctly represents the association and there is no evidence to guide the selection of an exposure model.

Determinants of Rotavirus Transmission: A Lag Nonlinear Time Series Analysis.

Rotavirus is a common viral infection among young children. As in many countries, the infection dynamics of rotavirus in the Netherlands are characterized by an annual winter peak, which was notably low in 2014. Previous study suggested an association between weather factors and both rotavirus transmission and incidence.

Staff exchange within and between nursing homes in The Netherlands and potential implications for MRSA transmission.

A recent countrywide MRSA spa-type 1081 outbreak in The Netherlands predominantly affected nursing homes, generating questions on how infection spreads within and between nursing homes despite a low national prevalence. Since the transfer of residents between nursing homes is uncommon in The Netherlands, we hypothesized that staff exchange plays an important role in transmission. This exploratory study investigated the extent of former (last 2 years) and current staff exchange within and between nursing homes in The Netherlands.

Leaving Home and Destination of Early Nest Leavers: Ethnicity, Spaces and Prices.

This study examines ethnic differences in leaving the parental home and the choice of destination (both location and quality of housing) in the Netherlands. Using unique individual administrative panel data, we study the mobility of the entire birth cohort 1983. In contrast to previous studies, this paper includes the geographical location and the quality of destination living arrangements in the analysis, in an attempt to explain ethnic differences in leaving the parental home.

The impact of exposure model misspecification on signal detection in prospective pharmacovigilance.

Purpose: Pharmacovigilance monitors the safety of drugs after their approval and marketing. Timely detection of adverse effects is important. The true relationship between time-varying drug use and the adverse event risk is typically unknown.

Reconciling conflicting clinical studies of antioxidant supplementation as HIV therapy: a mathematical approach.

Background: Small, highly reactive molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a crucial role in cell signalling and infection control. However, high levels of ROS can cause significant damage to cell structure and function. Studies have shown that infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) results in increased ROS concentrations, which can in turn lead to faster progression of HIV infection, and cause CD4+ T-cell apoptosis.

Intergenerational contact beyond the dyad: the role of the sibling network.

In this paper we aim to reach beyond the dyadic perspective on intergenerational contact and examine the influence of the sibling network on parent-child contact. We include aggregate sibling network characteristics as well as the adult child's position in the network vis-à-vis siblings, and use data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2002-2004 NKPS;  4,601 dyads). Regarding aggregate network characteristics results show that having sisters, having stepsiblings, increasing geographical distance between siblings, and decreasing levels of network cohesion are associated with less contact per parent-child dyad.