Helen Ward Profile picture
Prof Public Health, Imperial College. she/her. Social, genetic & environmental factors in health. Research & advocacy in long COVID, STI/HIV, inequalities.
Patrick D. Profile picture john Profile picture 2 subscribed
Sep 8, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read
Human Challenge studies are fast & powerful but can be controversial. We report how public involvement shaped the first HC study in COVID-19.
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@PigginMaria @crbarker91 @p_openshaw @HalleJ17 @ChrisChiuLab @Imperial_PERC @ImperialBRC @dianegbesemete
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Three online discussion groups addressed different questions.
1. A diverse group discussed whether people from ethnic minority groups should be eligible given risk of adverse events. No consensus, but opposed blanket exclusion, supported a broader risk assessment tool 2/7
May 22, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read
Seeing a lot of folk tweeting about monkeypox. Some are experts on COVID19 but not all have experience of emerging disease outbreak investigation. So here are some thoughts.
- It’s not Covid
- Control will be different
1/n My thoughts based on some experience of emerging disease outbreak investigation (particularly in gay men).

Close contact - sexual and social - in dense networks can lead to multiple linked cases whether a bug is sexually transmitted or not. 2/
Feb 20, 2022 13 tweets 5 min read
The UK has done many things wrong in the pandemic, but it has been world leading in surveillance.
As the govt prepares to cut back on protections, a short thread on some of the contributions of @ReactStudy in detecting new waves and variants, vaccine impact & inequalities. 1/ REACT has collected data from May 2020 and is still in the field today. Over 2 million PCR tests and 900,000 antibody tests have been carried out on randomly selected people across England.
This link shows numbers and response rates. 2/ #transparency
imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial…
Feb 16, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
Our @ReactStudy article in Nature Comms today, "Population antibody responses following COVID-19 vaccination in 212,102 individuals".
Clear evidence of waning 3-4 weeks after 1st dose, good response after second. Lower after AZ than Pfizer.
short🧵1/6
nature.com/articles/s4146… For both vaccines, antibody positivity decreased with age, and was higher in females and those with previous infection. Antibody positivity lower in transplant recipients, obese individuals, smokers and those with specific comorbidities. 2/6