Interventions used to curb COVID transmission had a major impact on other infectious diseases. The purpose of the role is to quantify the impact of social distancing restrictions, changing healthcare seeking behaviour, vaccine uptake and other effects of the COVID pandemic on the epidemiology of other infectious diseases. A focus of the work will be on varicella (chickenpox) dynamics, but with extensions to other relevant diseases. The post holder will develop infectious disease models, incorporating knowledge of the pathogen biology and social contact data in order to inform any public health response.

The position will be based in the infectious disease modelling group in Population Health Sciences and work closely with researchers in Engineering Maths at Bristol and the team at the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC).