Pamela Martinez is an Assistant Professor in Microbiology and Statistics. Her research focuses on applying mathematical and computational tools to study the population dynamics of human infectious diseases. She is particularly interested in understanding the impact of social inequality on disease transmission. During this talk, she will present three projects investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed major inequalities among different populations. First, she will discuss spatial variations in disease burden attributed to SARS-CoV-2 infections and deaths in Santiago, Chile. Then, she will show that vaccination trends exhibit social disparities at national and subnational levels and explore consequences for disease control. Finally, she will present how host heterogeneity is crucial in disentangling the relative benefit of bivalent or monovalent boosters for SARS-CoV-2 in the context of low- and middle-income countries.
