Dear colleagues, alumni and friends, As fall begins, I’m writing to share some exciting news and an update on our activities at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD). While remaining the Director of CCDD, I have begun a new, yearlong role as Director of Science for the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at CDC. This new center was called for in President Biden’s National Security Memo #1 and…
New Year’s Letter from Dr. Marc Lipsitch, CCDD Director
Dear colleagues, alumni, and friends, As we start the new year, it is a privilege to write to you with some reflections on 2020, a year like no other, and to offer some perspective on the year ahead. I lead the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard Chan School. Our group consists of me, Drs. Caroline Buckee, Bill Hanage and Michael Mina, about 15 postdocs and 15 PhD…
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COVID-19 Vaccines and Herd Immunity
By Marc Lipsitch How many people in a population will need to get a COVID-19 vaccine before herd immunity is achieved? This question has been all over the news lately, with speculations of 70%, 80%, or other numbers. The math needed to answer this question is simple, but the question is, in my opinion, unanswerable at this point because the inputs to the math — the numbers to plug into…
Declaration of Dr. Marc Lipsitch and Emma Accorsi regarding Oregon Temporary rule 437-001-0749
Oregon’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OR OSHA) regulates farmworkers’ working and housing conditions, including conditions in approximately 330 employer-owned labor housing sites in the state. With the spread of COVID-19, OR OSHA issued temporary COVID-19 standards for agriculture that went into effect on June 1, 2020. Although the temporary standards included other COVID-19 precautions for labor housing, transportation, and field sanitation, they critically did not increase the required living…
Protecting the Public’s Health During Protests Against Systemic Racism
Protests are important—they are a key medium for illuminating injustices that have long been ignored. Today, protests are being used as critical platforms for advocating against the structures that allow police brutality to persist and to go unpunished. However, as infectious disease epidemiologists, we recognize that protests can multiply the opportunities for COVID-19 transmission. We also know that African Americans already experience significant health inequities, including more heart disease, maternal…
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Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure
Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch, and Peter G. Smith https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42639016
Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the post-pandemic period
Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the post-pandemic period Stephen M Kissler, Christine Tedijanto, Edward Goldstein, Yonatan H. Grad, Marc Lipsitch https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.04.20031112v1
Social distancing strategies for curbing the COVID-19 epidemic
Social distancing strategies for curbing the COVID-19 epidemic Stephen Kissler, Christine Tedijanto, Marc Lipsitch, and Yonatan Grad https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42638988
Modeling the Comparative Impact of Individual Quarantine vs. Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19
Modeling the Comparative Impact of Individual Quarantine vs. Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19 Corey M Peak, Rebecca Kahn, Yonatan H Grad, Lauren M Childs, Ruoran Li, Marc Lipsitch, Caroline O Buckee https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031088v1
Aggregated mobility data could help fight COVID-19
Aggregated mobility data could help fight COVID-19 Caroline O. Buckee, Satchit Balsari, Jennifer Chan, Mercè Crosas, Francesca Dominici, Urs Gasser, Yonatan H. Grad, Bryan Grenfell, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Moritz U. G. Kraemer, Marc Lipsitch, C. Jessica E. Metcalf, Lauren Ancel Meyers, T. Alex Perkins, Mauricio Santillana, Samuel V. Scarpino, Cecile Viboud, Amy Wesolowski, Andrew Schroeder https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/20/science.abb8021