Andrew Lover
Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Deputy Director, New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Disease University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Amherst MA
Andrew Lover is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose work focuses on malaria and other vector-borne diseases.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Expertise
Biography
Lover has done field work in diverse global settings, including studies in Timor-Leste (East Timor), Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Kenya. He also has nearly a decade of experience as a drug discovery chemist, with research in respiratory therapeutics, novel antibiotics and inflammation targets.
Social Media
Video
Education
National University of Singapore
Ph.D.
National University of Singapore
M.P.H.
University of California, Santa Barbara
M.S.
Earlham College
B.A.
Links
Select Recent Media Coverage
It’s mosquito season in Western Massachusetts and experts are monitoring it in the Pioneer Valley
WAMC radio
2024-07-17
Andrew Lover, associate professor of epidemiology at UMass Amherst, discusses monitoring mosquitos in the Pioneer Valley. “This is exactly why we do public health surveillance,” he says. “This helps us understand where the virus is circulating, and then we can do more targeted surveillance and vector control in those areas.”
As masks come off, experts warn the pandemic isn't over
WGBH online
2023-03-11
"In many ways, we got lucky with Omicron," said epidemiologist Andrew Lover of UMass Amherst. "There's no reason to think that newer variants will be as mild. We all hope that that will stay the case. But we can't bank on it, necessarily."
Coronavirus forecasting: UMass device may help identify future trends
Mass Live online
2023-02-21
“We have the initial validation that the coughing indeed has a correlation with influenza-related illness,” Lover says. “Now we want to validate it beyond this specific hospital setting and show that we can generalize across locations.”
‘Tripledemic’ Rages On: Fever-Filled Weeks Lie Ahead
The New York Times online
2022-12-22
That means that more difficult, fever-filled weeks still lie ahead. “A lot of sniffly kids,” said Andrew Lover, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences. “There’ll be a lot of respiratory illness floating around from all these different sources.”
UMass gets $10M to tackle tick-borne diseases
Daily Hamshire Gazette online
2022-07-03
Epidemiologist Andrew Lover will serve as deputy director. An assistant professor in the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, Lover said NEWVEC will “develop practical public health tools to understand how and where people are most likely to interact with ticks, which will then allow for well-targeted and efficient health programs.”
Scholars dissect COVID-19 at Amherst College roundtable
Massachusetts Daily Collegian online
2020-03-05
“When quarantine and isolation are discussed, there are a lot of important discussions that should be held surrounding public good and individual liberties,” Andrew Lover, infectious disease epidemiologist at UMass, said. A balance between the two can and should maximize both, he said.
Select Publications
Passive Monitoring of Crowd-Level Cough Counts in Waiting Areas produces Reliable Syndromic Indicator for Total COVID-19 Burden in a Hospital Emergency Clinic [preprint]
Research Square2023
Syndromic surveillance is an effective tool for enabling the timely detection of infectious disease outbreaks and facilitating the implementation of effective mitigation strategies by public health authorities. While various information sources are currently utilized to collect syndromic signal data for analysis, the aggregated measurement of cough, an important symptom for many illnesses, is not widely employed as a syndromic signal. With recent advancements in ubiquitous sensing technologies, it becomes feasible to continuously measure population-level cough incidence in a contactless, unobtrusive, and automated manner.
Knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID-19 among university students and employees in Massachusetts, USA: a qualitative study
Journal of American College Health2023
Objective
To explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID-19 in university affiliates to inform future COVID-19 policies and practices.
Participants
Undergraduate students, graduate students and university employees at a large public university.
Characterizing the spatial distribution of multiple malaria diagnostic endpoints in a low-transmission setting in Lao PDR
Current Research on Serological Analyses of Infectious Diseases2023
Through an intensification of their programmatic activities and an increased coverage of interventions (1), the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) has seen substantial declines in malaria cases, with a fall in case incidence by 80% from 2016 to 2020, and no reported malaria deaths since 2018 (2). Transmission is very low in northern Lao PDR, with P. vivax cases making up the majority of malaria burden (1, 3). The nation aims to eliminate Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum from northern areas by 2025, and all species nationwide by 2030 (2, 4). As countries near elimination and transmission declines, they experience characteristic shifts in malaria epidemiology. Substantial areas become malaria-free, and malaria risk becomes increasingly heterogenous and geographically or demographically clustered (5, 6), with cases becoming more difficult to detect and diagnose.
COVID-19 exposes weaknesses in public health in the Peruvian Amazon and highlights opportunities for a One Health approach
CABI One Health2023
The Amazon is home to important wildlife and a biodiversity hotspot of global importance. The ancestral knowledge kept by Indigenous communities about its fauna and flora contributes further to its irreplaceable value. The Peruvian Amazon was heavily struck by the COVID-19 epidemic with a cumulative incidence of 725, a mortality rate of 34 per 100,000 inhabitants, and a case fatality rate of 4.6% by the end of July 2020. In this work, we review scientific literature and media to trace the events that happened at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Peruvian Amazon.
Measuring effects of ivermectin-treated cattle on malaria vectors in Vietnam: a village-randomized trial
medRxiv2023
Background
Malaria elimination using current tools has stalled in many areas. Ivermectin (IVM) is a broad-antiparasitic drug and mosquitocide that has been proposed as a tool for reaching malaria elimination. Under laboratory conditions, IVM has been shown to reduce the survival of Anopheles populations that have fed on IVM-treated mammals. Treating cattle with IVM has been proposed as an important contribution to malaria vector management, however, the impacts of IVM in this animal health use-case had been untested in field trials in Southeast Asia.
