Publications by authors named "Hilde K Brustad"

Restrictions of cross-border mobility are typically used to prevent an emerging disease from entering a country in order to slow down its spread. However, such interventions can come with a significant societal cost and should thus be based on careful analysis and quantitative understanding on their effects. To this end, we model the influence of cross-border mobility on the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 in the neighbouring Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study highlights the critical need to understand the transmission of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, revealing that it spreads more easily than the Delta variant in households.
  • Analysis of Norwegian contact tracing data from late 2021 showed that the secondary attack rate (SAR) for Omicron was significantly higher, with a relative risk of 1.41 compared to Delta.
  • Interestingly, while three-dose vaccinated individuals had a lower infection risk, the spread of Omicron was still notably high at 46% among those infected, demonstrating its potency even among vaccinated populations.
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Testing kinship between pairs of individuals is central to a wide range of applications. We focus on cases where many tests are done jointly. Typical examples include cases where DNA profiles are available from a burial site, a plane crash or a database of convicted offenders.

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In this paper we investigate various effects of inbreeding on the likelihood ratio (LR) in forensic kinship testing. The basic setup of such testing involves formulating two competing hypotheses, in the form of pedigrees, describing the relationship between the individuals. The likelihood of each hypothesis is computed given the available genetic data, and a conclusion is reached if the ratio of these exceeds some pre-determined threshold.

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