Test, trace and isolate – classic infection control measures – have been widely endorsed as the best way to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, ...
Test, trace and isolate – classic infection control measures – have been widely endorsed as the best way to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the world waits for a vaccine to be developed. These basic public health principles were evolved by epidemiologists. Physician John Snow’s use of maps and records to track the spread of a cholera outbreak back to its source in 1854 in London, provided the foundation of identifying and tracking diseases.
In this interview with Scroll.in, Professor Madhukar Pai, Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University, Montreal, explains the role of epidemiologists or ‘disease detectives’ in battling Covid-19, why it’s tough for epidemiological disease models to predict the future of the pandemic and the challenge of imperfect data.
Public health is the discipline that addresses health at the population level: preventing diseases, protecting and improving the health of communities. We know that epidemiologists are public health scientists and researchers. What exactly does that role entail, in regular, non-pandemic times?
Epidemiology, no doubt, is a key component of public health, but is also widely used in clinical medicine (where we call it ‘clinical epidemiology’).
Epidemiology is the application of the scientific method to health research (public health or clinical medicine). Using...
