Contact tracing, combined with social distancing measures, can be an effective strategy to keep COVID-19 numbers down (Kucharski et al. 2020) and has been the main strategy used in many parts of Canada. Starting with a team of about a dozen contract tracers, British Columbia, for example, has been ramping up towards a thousand tracers, who collectively have helped to bend down the numbers of COVID-19 cases in the province.

An email message sent by Dan Coombs on 2020-03-23 convened this Group. Dear Colleagues, This message is going to a group of people, mostly at UBC and SFU, who have expressed an interest (either to me or to Caroline) about working on modelling the current pandemic. Please read carefully and respond (if you have time) when you get to the end. A small group of us have been working with Michael and Naveed at BCCDC to attempt to provide some useful modelling support to their group in response to urgent requests for modelling.

I will talk about mathematical modelling reports from around the world for the emerging novel coronavirus epidemic. I will explain the …

There is no doubt that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 is mutating and thus has the potential to adapt during the …