International news websites like Pharmiweb and European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Magazine have written articles on ISSAI’s latest development – Stochastic Epidemic Simulator. In their articles they have explained how the simulator works, the importance of Big Data in helping to deal with epidemics, and mentioned different simulation scenarios that the ISSAI team has tested on the simulator.
Pharmiweb.com – is a news portal that showcases global news on recent developments related to the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Magazine – is an online magazine that features pharmaceutical and medical news and information for pharmaceutical manufacturers in Europe.
In the local media – Scientist.kz website, which is an informational portal that highlights local and international scientific news, has written a detailed news post on ISSAI’s project.
Additionally, a popular Kazinform news portal has mentioned the simulator project as one of the ways how Nazarbayev University is assisting in coping with the COVID-19 in Kazakhstan.
The ISSAI team of Nazarbayev University has developed a stochastic epidemic simulator for the Republic of Kazakhstan (RoK). In the simulator Kazakhstan is represented as a graph of 17 connected nodes (14 oblasts and 3 cities of Republican significance), where each node runs a separate SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, and Recovered) epidemiological model. Simulator shows the spread of the disease based on various scenarios consisting of different parameters such as initial number of the exposed in a node, daily quarantine rate of the exposed, hospital capacity of a region, daily infected to severe infected transition rate, and more. The parameters can be adjusted for each region. Depending on the parameters, the simulator can output results for different scenarios and the spread of the disease can be visualized on an interactive map.
ISSAI has prepared a series of video tutorials such that the simulator can be used, adapted, and improved by others. You can get further information from the main webpage of the project (http://test-test-issai.nu.edu.kz/episim/).