Public summary
Beginning in May 2022, Mpox virus spread rapidly in high-income countries through close human-to-human contact primarily amongst communities of gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Thomas House was part of a cross-government and academia collaboration looking at the public health response to the outbreak. As part of the Mpox modelling consortium he worked to better understand and interpret the available data and use it to inform statistical and mechanistic models to predict future epidemic behaviour. The purpose of this consortium was to understand the transmission routes, identify early warnings of transmission outside GBMSM, evaluate the effect of different interventions and provide scientific evidence on estimates of current and future trends of the mpox epidemic in England. They found behaviour change and vaccination were both important control measures, with modelling suggesting that vaccination against mpox in England was likely to have substantially reduced the numbers of new cases of monkeypox virus in GBMSM. Through being part of this consortium he was able to give timely, responsive, interdisciplinary, and informative modelling for public health advice during an emerging outbreak allowing for informed decision-making.| Impact date | 2021 → 2023 |
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| Category of impact | Health and wellbeing |