How Northeastern is helping to try and contain the Ebola outbreak
“We don’t do work on the ground… but we provide the intelligence to the people responding to the emergency,” said Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute.
The Ebola outbreak raging across Central Africa is an all-hands-on-deck situation, so it’s no surprise that Northeastern researchers — some of whom were also part of the response during previous major Ebola outbreaks on the continent — have been called on to help. This time around, the experts are aiding the effort in a range of ways, including by providing intelligence, using AI to analyze data, and developing risk models.
“We don’t do work on the ground — what we call intervention — but we provide the intelligence to the people responding to the emergency,” said Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute (NetSI) and Sternberg family distinguished professor in physics at Northeastern University. “One of the first lines of defence is intelligence.”
As of Wednesday, May 27, 906 people were suspected of contracting the virus and 223 suspected deaths were attributed to the outbreak, according to data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO), which coordinates the world’s response to health emergencies.
Vespignani cautioned that the case count doesn’t necessarily reflect the growth of the outbreak.
“All this information – every day adding 100 cases or 200 cases – is not the growth rate of the epidemic, it is the growth rate of the surveillance system that is finally picking up cases,” he said.
Vespignani is also the coordinator of the Center for Advanced Epidemic Analytics and Predictive Modeling Technology, known as EPISTORM, which works to improve modeling, forecasting tools, and the use of data and analytics during health emergencies.
The center is funded by Insight Net, a network of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that works to improve the collective ability to understand, predict, prepare for, and respond to infectious disease threats through collaboration among analytic experts and public health departments.
The group is part of a global scramble to figure out a vast amount of information about the outbreak. The questions they are trying to answer include which countries the disease is at risk of expanding to, how best to focus resources for border screening and travel limitations, the number and location of the cases, and the trajectory of the outbreak – is it growing? Declining? Are mitigation and control efforts having effects?
Jessica Davis, a research assistant professor in the department of public health and health sciences, and core faculty member at the Network Science Institute, also said the extent of the outbreak was currently difficult to measure and map.
“Everything is still suspected, so it’s hard to even know the reach of the outbreak,” Davis, who is working on outbreak forecasts, said.
Researchers are seeking more specific information about the currently circulating Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for instance, especially since there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics. On May 15, lab tests confirmed deaths from this rare strain in Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and in Kampala, Uganda. At that point, the WHO declared an outbreak of the virus, and just two days later, the international agency declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Vespignani said previous, small outbreaks of the strain, namely the ones in Uganda and DRC in 2007 and 2012, give researchers a comparison for examining the current outbreak’s incubation period, the time between exposure to a pathogen and the first appearance of symptoms, its transmissibility and other characteristics to get a sense of how best to forecast the disease’s possible spread.
The center is currently using computational models, AI, data — “everything that we call analytics,” as Vespignani said — and communicating with public health experts in the United States, international agencies and those on the ground in the Ebola response.
“We are trying to share resources and knowledge with everybody,” Vespignani said.
Samuel Scarpino, director of AI + life sciences in the Institute for Experiential AI and a professor of practice in public health and health sciences at Northeastern, said “substantial amounts” of data have to be compiled and organized to accurately model the outbreak and prioritize resource distribution.
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For instance, Scarpino cited information on population structure and connectivity, things like case counts, locations of refugee camps and healthcare facilities.
“All of those kinds of data are out in the public,” Scarpino said. But, “They’re just messy and disorganized.”
Vespignani added that they can investigate population maps and index flight information such as routes and bookings to help contact trace and determine whether the disease could have spread beyond its origin in the DRC.
Then there is the quality of the data.
Because of how everything kind of came to be so quickly, the data availability is still kind of fuzzy,” Davis said. “So it’s hard to make a lot of statements or claims about when did this emerge or even how many active true cases we have.”
Davis adds that the outbreak has also spread to areas with different reporting methods and standards, including different travel restrictions. For instance, Rwanda closed its borders completely, she said, while other countries just have international flight restrictions. Differences in restrictions could hamper contact tracing efforts to predict and prevent the disease’s potential spread.
The data are crucial, however, because there is plenty of misinformation that has to be sifted through.
“You have the epidemic of the biology of the pathogen, and then you have an infodemic of what are the rumors or information that’s spreading in the community of what they believe is happening, how bad it is, what they should do, how they should protect themselves,” Davis said. “It’s a problem that probably comes with all infectious outbreaks.”
The conspiracy theories range from beliefs that aid workers brought the disease to get more money or that the disease is a fear tactic so outsiders can access the abundance of gold in Congo, according to The Washington Post.
Northeastern is up to the task, however. Not only is experiential learning a hallmark of the university, so is what Scarpino described as “the experiential nature of research.”
“Northeastern has an international reputation for contributing to these kinds of public health emergency responses,” Scarpino said. “That’s continuing.”
