Publications by authors named "O G Pybus"
The effectiveness of poultry vaccination in preventing the transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (AIVs) has been debated, and its impact on wild birds remains uncertain. Here, we reconstruct the movements of H5 subtype AIV lineages among vaccinated poultry, unvaccinated poultry, and wild birds, worldwide, from 1996 to 2023. We find that there is a time lag in viral transmission among different host populations and that movements from wild birds to unvaccinated poultry were more frequent than those from wild birds to vaccinated poultry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToward optimal disease surveillance with graph-based active learning.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
December 2024
Article Synopsis
- Tracking emerging pathogens is essential for effective public health responses, and this study models resource allocation for testing as a decision-making problem involving locations as nodes on a graph.
- The researchers evaluate different active learning policies for selecting testing locations, comparing their effectiveness in various outbreak scenarios through simulations on both synthetic and real-world networks.
- A new policy that considers the distance-weighted average entropy shows improved performance over existing methods, emphasizing the importance of balancing exploration and exploitation in developing surveillance strategies for pathogen monitoring.
Background: Early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica) involved in the illegal wildlife trade in mainland China were identified as hosts of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs). Although it is unconfirmed whether pangolins or other traded wildlife served as intermediate hosts for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the trafficking of pangolins presents a clear risk for transmission of viruses with zoonotic and epizootic potential regardless. We have investigated the origins of pangolin carcasses seized in Hong Kong and have evaluated their potential exposure to SARSr-CoVs, other coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses, aiming to address a gap in our knowledge with regard to the role of wildlife trade in the maintenance and emergence of pathogens with zoonotic and epizootic potential.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Anthropogenic land-use change is a significant factor in global biodiversity loss and poses health risks through biological interactions.
- An analysis of a 43-year dataset on rodents in Central China shows that land consolidation led to larger habitat patches, a shift in rodent communities, and a drastic decline in diversity, with most species nearly disappearing.
- The study emphasizes that land consolidation favored the striped field mouse, a key host for Hantaan virus, illustrating the need to consider the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and public health management.
Human mobility is strongly associated with the spread of SARS-CoV-2 via air travel on an international scale and with population mixing and the number of people moving between locations on a local scale. However, these conclusions are drawn mostly from observations in the context of the global north where international and domestic connectivity is heavily influenced by the air travel network; scenarios where land-based mobility can also dominate viral spread remain understudied. Furthermore, research on the effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) has mostly focused on national- or regional-scale implementations, leaving gaps in our understanding of the potential benefits of implementing NPIs at higher granularity.
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