The Swedish universities' supercomputers are interconnected, and right now the computing power is being used to crack the question that everyone is currently asking: How do we prevent the spread of the corona virus as well as possible?

A team of leading epidemiologists and researchers in Uppsala and other parts of Sweden are working on this task, and they are currently fighting all they can to obtain evidence so that politicians and individual citizens can make informed decisions.

"We are very in a hurry to get this information out, because we think it is so important for the public to be aware of it," says biochemist Jasmine Gardner at the Department of Chemistry at Uppsala University.

Which model is best?

The research team has developed five models of how the virus spreads at different degrees of limiting efforts. Everything from nothing being done to the whole community being shut down.

With the help of simulations, the computers calculate how these efforts affect all of Sweden's more than ten million inhabitants - down to the individual level.

- We can break it down and see how it affects, for example, health care staff and households, as well as for society at large. In small communities, the sources of error play a big role, but for larger cities we know that the forecasts will be fairly accurate.

Anxious and urgent

Thanks to the power of supercomputers, it goes fast. The researchers believe that in a few days they will be able to present an initial result.

- This project is so urgent and important in a way that has made it very difficult, but also very exciting, says Jasmine Gardner.

In the clip above, she tells more about how the work goes.