Epidemiological drivers of transmissibility and severity of SARS-CoV-2 in England.

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic progressed, distinct variants emerged and dominated in England. These variants, Wildtype, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron were characterized by variations in transmissibility and severity. We used a robust mathematical model and Bayesian inference framework to analyse epidemiological surveillance data from England. We quantified the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), therapeutics, and vaccination on virus transmission and severity. Each successive variant had a higher intrinsic transmissibility. Omicron (BA.1) had the highest basic reproduction number at 8.3 (95% credible interval (CrI) 7.7-8.8). Varying levels of NPIs were crucial in controlling virus transmission until population immunity accumulated. Immune escape properties of Omicron decreased effective levels of immunity in the population by a third. Furthermore, in contrast to previous studies, we found Alpha had the highest basic infection fatality ratio (2.9%, 95% CrI 2.7-3.2), followed by Delta (2.2%, 95% CrI 2.0-2.4), Wildtype (1.2%, 95% CrI 1.1-1.2), and Omicron (0.7%, 95% CrI 0.6-0.8). Our findings highlight the importance of continued surveillance. Long-term strategies for monitoring and maintaining effective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 are critical to inform the role of NPIs to effectively manage future variants with potentially higher intrinsic transmissibility and severe outcomes.

Graph-Powered Interpretable Machine Learning Models for Abnormality Detection in Ego-Things Network.

In recent days, it is becoming essential to ensure that the outcomes of signal processing methods based on machine learning (ML) data-driven models can provide interpretable predictions. The interpretability of ML models can be defined as the capability to understand the reasons that contributed to generating a given outcome in a complex autonomous or semi-autonomous system. The necessity of interpretability is often related to the evaluation of performances in complex systems and the acceptance of agents' automatization processes where critical high-risk decisions have to be taken. This paper concentrates on one of the core functionality of such systems, i.e., abnormality detection, and on choosing a model representation modality based on a data-driven machine learning (ML) technique such that the outcomes become interpretable. The interpretability in this work is achieved through graph matching of semantic level vocabulary generated from the data and their relationships. The proposed approach assumes that the data-driven models to be chosen should support emergent self-awareness (SA) of the agents at multiple abstraction levels. It is demonstrated that the capability of incrementally updating learned representation models based on progressive experiences of the agent is shown to be strictly related to interpretability capability. As a case study, abnormality detection is analyzed as a primary feature of the collective awareness (CA) of a network of vehicles performing cooperative behaviors. Each vehicle is considered an example of an Internet of Things (IoT) node, therefore providing results that can be generalized to an IoT framework where agents have different sensors, actuators, and tasks to be accomplished. The capability of a model to allow evaluation of abnormalities at different levels of abstraction in the learned models is addressed as a key aspect for interpretability.