S. Hoffmann, Fritz Lipmann Institute, Jena
Service center: RNA Bioinformatics Center – RBC
The modelling and prediction of the pandemic course of the SARS-Cov2 outbreak or any other pandemic are made difficult by the high temporal and local dynamics of the influencing variables. In order to map the developments in different districts, federal states, metropolitan areas, or rural areas, to assess the effectiveness of measures and to prevent the flare-up of infections at an early stage, it is helpful to enable a quick, easily parameterizable and timely modelling of the course.
We have, therefore, begun to develop an online monitor for statistical analysis and modelling of the pandemic course, which accesses a common database and can optionally be expanded by user-specified data. The monitor is to be regularly adapted by appropriate experts and supplemented by suitable epidemiological models and parameterizations. With such a tool at hand, on-site experts and decision-makers can use it to get a better picture of the course of the pandemic based on the current data. As part of this project, we are working towards creating a programmatic infrastructure for such a monitor with the involvement of other specialist disciplines and researchers, in particular epidemiology, bioinformatics, and systems biology. A first example implementation for such a monitor based on the daily updated data from J. Hopkins University can be found at https://genome.leibniz-fli.de/covid. The example implementation referenced here to demonstrate several programmatic possibilities is currently being developed in cooperation with the group of Prof. Hans Kestler, Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University.
Figure: Functions of the SARS-CoV2-Monitor currently developed at the RBC site in Jena and elsewhere. The tool allows the fitting and parametrization of various model functions (a) and visualization (b) of various epidemiological indicators calculated from real time data published by the Johns Hopkins University and the Robert Koch Institute at various resolution levels.