Vaccination against COVID-19: lessons for future pandemics
For the 2024 Annual Lecture from the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, Professor Matt Keeling will analyse the deployment and roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines.
The development and roll-out of multiple COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2020 was undoubtedly a major scientific and public health triumph. However, with this powerful tool came a number of technical questions about how these resources are best deployed.
Following the timeline of the pandemic, this talk will consider the key questions that arose, what went well and what was more problematic. Professor Matt Keeling will begin at the early pandemic when little was known about the vaccines, and finish with contemporary work where COVID vaccines must conform to the same cost-effective constraints as other vaccines.
Finally, this talk will consider what these results tell us about preparedness for the next pandemic, and how vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions need to work in synergy.
This lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Pumphandle Social: Cafe and Courtyard.
Speaker
Many, many years ago Matt Keeling trained as a mathematician and while he is still excited by theoretical approaches, his work has increasingly focused on predictions for policy.
His first exposure to this science-policy interface was during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. He has since been a member of Scientific Pandemic Infection group on Modelling (SPI-M),the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and National Emerging Respiratory Virus Technical Advisory Group (NERVTAG).
His on-going MEMVIE project has provided a range of second-opinion modelling advice to JCVI and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), most notably on gender-neutral vaccination against the human papilloma virus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt provided detailed modelling advice to both SPI-M and JCVI, providing predictions that helped underpin policy. He has worked on a range of infections from plague to pneumococcal infection, and from foot-and-mouth to flu.
Matt Keeling OBE is currently a Professor in the School of Life Sciences & Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick, where he is Director of the The Zeeman Institute for SBIDER. He is also the co-lead of the JUNIPER partnership.
Event notices
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- Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available.
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