Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, winter respiratory infections
in the UK were somewhat predictable in timing, and
depending on the pathogen, in the magnitude of the
epidemic, and the age distribution of cases. Vaccination
strategies for influenza were static, and surveillance systems
were robust.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the regular seasonal
patterns into disarray: RSV has caused epidemics in summer
with older average age of infection, and one influenza strain
(B/Yamagata) may have gone extinct. The effect on other
infections (parainfluenzas, rhinovirus, adenovirus, human
metapneumovirus) is less obvious, but all have been affected.
A large amount of disruption is likely due to the intense non-pharmaceutical interventions employed, but there are also
potentially biological impacts resulting from: changes in a
variety of factors, including in sequence and frequency of
early-life infections, in first exposure timing, seasonality,
vaccination (for influenza).
This PhD project will identify some hypotheses for the
changes in epidemiology of these viruses (as above) with the
focus determined in collaboration between the student and
supervisors. We will then design novel transmission models
that could address a hypothesis and fit these models to
publicly available surveillance data.
The overarching aim is to use the disruption to seasonal
circulation to allow testing and inference on how the
wintertime ecology of viruses in the UK

Please see application guidance at: https://mrc-lid.lshtm.ac.uk/