Machine learning used to optimise disease surveillance

A new machine learning informed strategy could support public health leaders to design better surveillance during a disease outbreak.

Land travel and local mobility played a key role in COVID-19 spread in Chile

An international team led by researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on Pandemic Genomics studied how local travel patterns and mobile data from Chile can improve global pandemic responses, highlighting the importance of land-based mobility and targeted strategies.

Researchers track how flu is affected during a pandemic

An international team of researchers, including researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on Pandemic Genomics, have traced the global movement and evolution of seasonal influenza viruses to evaluate how the virus is impacted during pandemics.

Ancient DNA reveals how a chicken virus evolved to become more deadly

An international team of scientists led by geneticists and disease biologists from the University of Oxford - including biologists on the Oxford Martin programmes on the Future of Food and Pandemic Genomics - and LMU Munich have used ancient DNA to trace the evolution of Marek's Disease Virus (MDV).

COVID-19 travel restrictions came too late to halt spread of Omicron, shows study

Oxford researchers responsible for tracking COVID-19 Alpha and Delta variant transmission across the UK have published their genomic tracing of the Omicron variant concluding that the earliest importation of Omicron into the UK was likely before the variant was identified on 15th November 2021.

Dame Angela McLean announced as new UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor

Story of the UK’s COVID-19 Delta variant epidemic revealed by genome tracing

A team of researchers led by Oxford and Edinburgh have today revealed how the Delta variant of COVID-19 became the dominant variant across the UK in 2021.

Alpha variant spread via ‘super-seeding’ event within UK

The rapid spread of the Alpha variant of COVID-19 resulted from biological changes in the virus and was enhanced by large numbers of infected people ‘exporting’ the variant to multiple parts of the UK, in what the researchers call a ‘super-seeding’ event.

Team behind SARS-CoV-2 naming system formalised as the Pango Network

Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh have announced the formalisation of the Pango Network, an international team of experts to oversee the identification and naming of different lineages of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Research consortium including Oxford University and Google.org announce new platform to track COVID-19 data

Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, the University of Oxford and other leading institutions including Boston Children’s Hospital and Northeastern University, today launched Global.health.

COVID-19 transmission chains in the UK traced through time and space

A team of scientists, led by researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, has analysed the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK and produced the most fine-scaled and comprehensive genomic analysis of transmission of any epidemic to date.

The need for open data sharing in the era of global pandemics

Research emphasises need for COVID-19 vigilance in tight-knit communities

Small, close-knit communities are at high risk for rapid, intense COVID outbreaks, especially if they haven’t yet experienced outbreaks of COVID-19, shows a new study by the University of Oxford and Northeastern University, Boston.