Toronto scientists develop viral outbreak mapping tool

What better way to celebrate Canada day than to laud the achievements of a team of Canadian scientists who figured out how to predict viral disease hot spots based on air travel?

Calling the system the "first-of-its-kind," the Toronto Star reported that the mathematical analysis tool developed by a team of Canadian scientists accurately maps out infectious disease outbreaks. The system uses air traffic data and has accurately predicted the spread of H1N1. The scientific team wrote about their results tracking H1N1 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Work on the system began shortly after the SARS outbreak in Canada, in 2003. The coronavirus that causes SARS originated in China’s Guangdong province and was spread quickly through the world by travellers. Canada experienced 44 deaths due to the virus, racked up $1 billion in costs fighting the outbreak and business and industry lost billions of dollars. The predictive system is called BIO.DIASPORA. The teams’ research report, An Analysis of Canada’s Vulnerability to Emerging Infectious Disease Threats Via the Global Airline Transportation Network, is the result of the examination of Canada’s global connections through air traffic, how those connections make Canada vulnerable to infectious disease, and how to reduce those threats. The team found that there are 2.1 billion travellers using airlines each year, and over 800 million of those travellers are going from one country to another. The scientists tested their analysis model using the H1N1 outbreak, and found that their model is highly accurate in predicting the global spread of infectious disease. The team concludes that

“The risk of an infectious disease threat spreading into Canada from another part of the world is a composite of the following conditional probabilities:

i) that an infectious disease threat will emerge at the source location

ii) that the source location will be capable of containing the threat,

iii) that people traveling out of the source location will arrive in Canada.”

The team also identified 10 key factors that would help measure the potential risk. The team of twelve scientists was based out of the Keenan Research Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital and included expertise from the University of Toronto, York University, the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, Ryerson University, University of Waterloo and Queen's University.. The team was led by Dr. Kamran M. Khan, staff physician, Division of Infectious Diseases, at St. Michael's Hospital.