Sunmi ‍Lee

It turned out to be the intensive isolation and quarantine interventions that were the most critical factors that prevented the spread of the MERS outbreak. The results are expected to be useful to devise more efficient intervention strategies in the future.

Dengue fever is a major international public health concern, with more than 55% of the world population at risk of infection. Recent climate changes related to global warming have increased the potential risk of domestic outbreaks of dengue in Korea. In this study, we develop a two-strain dengue model associated with climate-dependent parameters based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration. We assess the potential risks of deng

Super-spreading events have been observed in the transmission dynamics of many infectious diseases. The 2015 MERS-CoV outbreak in the Republic of Korea has also shown super-spreading events with a significantly high level of heterogeneity in generating secondary cases. It becomes critical to understand the mechanism for this high level of heterogeneity to develop effective intervention strategies and preventive plans for future emerging infectious diseases. In this regard, agent-based modeling i

Emerging and re-emerging dengue fever has posed serious problems to public health officials in many tropical and subtropical countries. Continuous traveling in seasonally varying areas makes it more difficult to control the spread of dengue fever. In this work, we consider a two-patch dengue model that can capture the movement of host individuals between and within patches using a residence-time matrix. A previous two-patch dengue model without seasonality is extended by adding host demographics

This study examined how children’s participation can be actualized, and their perspectives respected, through an action research project that engaged them in the development of an outdoor play area in a child care center in South Korea. An educator devised a broad plan and invited children to participate and take the initiative in leading the project. Young children were capable of expressing their points of view and could contribute directly to issues that mattered to them if they worked in acc

The forced Korteweg-de Vries equation is considered to investigate the impact of bottom configurations on the free surface waves in a two-dimensional channel flow. In the study of shallow water waves, the bottom topography plays a critical role, which can determine the characteristics of wave motions significantly. The interplay between solitary waves and the bottom topography can exhibit more interesting dynamics of the free surface waves when the bottom configuration is more complex. In the pr

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) poses a severe threat to public health officials all around the world. The early COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea displayed significant spatial heterogeneity. The number of confirmed cases increased rapidly in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk (epicenter), whereas the spread was much slower in the rest of Korea. A two-patch mathematical model with a mobility matrix is developed to capture this significant spatial heterogeneity of COVID-19 outbreaks from 18 February

Recurrent outbreaks of the influenza virus continue to pose a serious health threat all over the world. The role of mass media becomes increasingly important in modeling infectious disease transmission dynamics since it can provide public health information that influences risk perception and health behaviors. Motivated by the recent 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic outbreak in South Korea, a mathematical model has been developed. In this work, a previous influenza transmission model is modified by

The characteristics of COVID-19 have evolved at an accelerated rate over the last two years since the first SARS-CoV-2 case was discovered in December 2019. This evolution is due to the complex interplay among virus, humans, vaccines, and environments, which makes the elucidation of the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 essential to assess ongoing policy responses. In this study, we carry out an extensive retrospective analysis on infection clusters of COVID-19 in South Ko

The aim of this study was to examine the oral health-related behaviors in mothers and their children and the prevalence of dental caries in both. A sample of 2536 children and their mothers was selected from the Fifth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Variables were analyzed using multiple regression to evaluate the prevalence of dental caries among children and mothers, demographic socioeconomic status, and oral health-related behaviors. The average age of the mothers was

A statistical model accounting for imported and locally transmitted cases was employed to estimate R₀ and R_t. Our results indicated that the prompt implementation of airport screening measures (contact tracing with case isolation and quarantine) successfully reduced local transmission caused by imported cases despite passengers arriving from high-risk countries throughout the year. Moreover, various mitigation interventions, including social distancing and travel restrictio

The COVID-19 pandemic has been spreading worldwide with more than 246 million confirmed cases and 5 million deaths across more than 200 countries as of October 2021. There have been multiple disease clusters, and transmission in South Korea continues. We aim to analyze COVID-19 clusters in Seoul from 4 March to 4 December 2020. A branching process model is employed to investigate the strength and heterogeneity of cluster-induced transmissions. We estimate the cluster-specific effective reproduct