SMART CONTAINMENT WITH ACTIVE LEARNING (SCALE) PROJECT

The Smart Containment with Active Learning (SCALE) Consortium was formed to assist policymakers in developing a multidisciplinary policy response to COVID-19 that draws on the expertise of researchers and practitioners in public health, infectious diseases, epidemiology, economics, policy, and public management, technology, and data science as well as business & non-profit leaders.

CERP collected and collated evidence from different sources to provide understanding of the evolution of COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan. SCALE Consortium worked in close collaboration with Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department Punjab (P&SHD) on COVID-19 from November 2020 until June 2022. The project team attempted to understand the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, variation in infectivity rates and finally rates of morbidity and mortality in the province of Punjab, Pakistan by using the administrative data. Random sample testing was conducted in the urban community in Lahore District to supplement the administrative data.

Furthermore, the project gathered primary survey data on citizen’s vaccination rates and views towards vaccination. The project also analysed the contact data using two different contact tracing algorithms, mortal bandits and simple pilot. In the process, individual heterogeneity in infectivity was also estimated. The results open an entirely new direction for contact tracing that may allow countries to reduce the contact tracing burden by 80% or more. This significantly reduces the fiscal and human resources required to interrupt outbreaks of the epidemic.