Genomic epidemiology offers high resolution estimates of serial intervals for COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Serial intervals - the time between symptom onset in infector and infectee - are a fundamental quantity in infectious disease control. However, their estimation requires knowledge of individuals' exposures, typically obtained through resource-intensive contact tracing efforts. We introduce an alternate framework using virus sequences to inform who infected whom and thereby estimate serial intervals. We apply our technique to SARS-CoV-2 sequences from case clusters in the first two COVID-19 waves in Victoria, Australia. We find that our approach offers high resolution, cluster-specific serial interval estimates that are comparable with those obtained from contact data, despite requiring no knowledge of who infected whom and relying on incompletely-sampled data. Compared to a published seria

SUBMITTER: Stockdale JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10415581 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature