During the COVID-19 pandemic, Te Pūnaha Matatini ran a government-funded modelling programme to inform New Zealand’s pandemic response. Its reports went to the Ministry of Health and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and fed into decisions on non-pharmaceutical interventions, border controls and vaccination. The team was awarded the 2020 Prime Minister’s Science Prize for this work.
I worked on the programme full time from March 2020 to September 2021, focussed on the real-time modelling programme alongside Professor Shaun Hendy and Professor Michael Plank. This involved:
- Modelling the spread of infection
- Writing technical reports for public health and government agencies
- Presenting the results to officials and policymakers
- Speaking to the media
- Publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Modelling
I built and ran stochastic models of COVID-19 spread in New Zealand, to answer policy questions in real time, including:
- Outbreak models. A stochastic model of COVID-19 spread, used to assess non-pharmaceutical interventions and the chance of elimination as outbreaks were controlled.
- Border and quarantine. The risk of an outbreak from infected arrivals and border workers under different quarantine and testing policies.
- Vaccination. The vaccine coverage needed to control outbreaks without other measures, and outbreak outcomes at each stage of the rollout.
- Equity. Differences in fatality and hospitalisation risk by population demographics.
Outbreak response and communication
Throughout the pandemic, we modelled outbreaks in real time and communicated the results, including:
- Outbreak modelling. Real-time modelling of the spread of outbreaks, to inform decisions on restrictions.
- Costs and benefits. Comparing the costs of stricter and lighter restrictions for eliminating an outbreak.
- Outbreak control. How contact tracing, quarantine, isolation and testing work together to control outbreaks.
- Government and public health. Technical reports and regular meetings with officials and policymakers.
- Media. Articles and interviews explaining the modelling to the public.
See more
The papers, technical reports and media articles from this work are on the research outputs page.