James Hay

@jameshay.bsky.social

Research Fellow at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford. Using maths and stats to understand infectious disease dynamics, mostly viral kinetics and serology. https://hay-idd.github.io/

🧵 Is it a super flu year? Who knows, but I think the current reporting is stupid. A pissed off thread using data. Firstly - here are today's headlines and some from the last 3 years... spot the difference. 1/10

BildBild

WHO Disease Update Notification: Seasonal influenza 🦠Since August 2025, there's been a rapid increase of A(H3N2) J.2.4.1 subclade K driving early & prolonged seasons 🦠Vaccine helps against hospitalisation, unclear about milder impact 🦠K induces "normal" disease spectrum www.who.int/emergencies/...

Seasonal influenza - Global situation

Seasonal influenza (‘the flu’) is an acute respiratory infection caused by influenza viruses that circulate globally and year-round. It can cause illness ranging from mild to severe, sometimes resulti...

who.int

🚨 New paper out in PLOS Computational Biology! 🚨 We're excited to share our new paper, serojump, a new probabilistic framework and R package for inferring infections and antibody kinetics from longitudinal serological data. 📄 Full paper: tinyurl.com/re7du3t2 R package: seroanalytics.org/serojump

A serological inference package using reversible jump mcmc

The `serojump` package provides tools for fitting serological models to antibody kinetics data using reversible-jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJ-MCMC). It enables researchers to model the dynamics of...

seroanalytics.org

Excited to share our paper on viral load dynamics of West Nile virus in mosquitoes! Key findings: 1. Variation in pooled Ct values from mosquito traps reflect underlying biological and epidemiological mechanisms. 2. WNV prevalence estimates are improved by using Cts rather than +ve/-ve pool status.

Punya Alahakoon@punya-alahakoon.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint! We use pooled Ct values from mosquito surveillance to estimate West Nile virus prevalence—without binarising the data. Joint work with Ian Marchinton, Joseph R. Fauver & James Hay. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our paper on viral load dynamics of West Nile virus in mosquitoes! Key findings: 1. Variation in pooled Ct values from mosquito traps reflect underlying biological and epidemiological mechanisms. 2. WNV prevalence estimates are improved by using Cts rather than +ve/-ve pool status.

Punya Alahakoon@punya-alahakoon.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint! We use pooled Ct values from mosquito surveillance to estimate West Nile virus prevalence—without binarising the data. Joint work with Ian Marchinton, Joseph R. Fauver & James Hay. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hello influenza enthusiasts! You may be interested in our recent publication linked below. We used multi-strain serology to figure out who got infected with which A/H3N2 influenza strain and when, allowing us to reconstruct epidemiological patterns back to 1968 stratified by time, age and location.

James Hay@jameshay.bsky.social · 2y ago

Reconstructed influenza A/H3N2 infection histories using multistrain serology, paper out in PLOS Biology plos.io/3YIDQpt! We inferred lifetime infections and antibody levels for 1130 individuals in Guangzhou, China, giving insights into long-term influenza incidence and immunity. Thread below:

Are you interested in analysing serological data for infectious disease epidemiology? Check out our new review article on serodynamics! With Saki Takahashi at JHU and Isobel Routledge at UCSF. (See next comment if you're into serology modeling) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Serodynamics: A primer and synthetic review of methods for epidemiological inference using serological data

We present a review and primer of methods to understand epidemiological dynamics and identify past exposures from serological data, referred to as ser…

sciencedirect.com

Are you interested in analysing serological data for infectious disease epidemiology? Check out our new review article on serodynamics! With Saki Takahashi at JHU and Isobel Routledge at UCSF. (See next comment if you're into serology modeling) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Serodynamics: A primer and synthetic review of methods for epidemiological inference using serological data

We present a review and primer of methods to understand epidemiological dynamics and identify past exposures from serological data, referred to as ser…

sciencedirect.com

New study tracking epidemic dynamics using cycle threshold values (a proxy for viral load) from routine hospital and community testing. This is the next step of our work from 2021 showing that the population distribution of Ct values over time is related to SARS-CoV-2 epidemic growth rates.

T.Y. Lim@tylim.bsky.social · 2y ago

How do you track an ongoing epidemic, especially without large-scale testing? We explored the use of routinely collected RT-qPCR cycle threshold values in our new preprint out now! doi.org/10.1101/2024... 1/

New study tracking epidemic dynamics using cycle threshold values (a proxy for viral load) from routine hospital and community testing. This is the next step of our work from 2021 showing that the population distribution of Ct values over time is related to SARS-CoV-2 epidemic growth rates.

T.Y. Lim@tylim.bsky.social · 2y ago

How do you track an ongoing epidemic, especially without large-scale testing? We explored the use of routinely collected RT-qPCR cycle threshold values in our new preprint out now! doi.org/10.1101/2024... 1/