In this public lecture, Prof. Deirdre Hollingsworth looks at the dynamics of pandemics, and use mathematics to demonstrate why this particular infection is so hard to contain. She discusses the effective reproduction number, or the “R-rate”: what is it, and how is it estimated? Finally she talks about how mathematicians model contact tracing and the particular challenges in contact tracing for COVID-19.

Professor Deirdre Hollingsworth is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford. She uses mathematical models and statistical analyses to study the evolution and transmission dynamics of infectious diseases with the aim of informing the design of more effective control interventions.