Inferring community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the United Kingdom using the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey.

ABSTRACT: Key epidemiological parameters, including the effective reproduction number, R(t), and the instantaneous growth rate, r(t), generated from an ensemble of models, have been informing public health policy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in the four nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). However, estimation of these quantities became challenging with the scaling down of surveillance systems as part of the transition from the "emergency" to "endemic" phase of the pandemic. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) provided an opportunity to continue estimating these parameters in the absence of other data streams. We used a penalised spline model fitted to the publicly-available ONS CIS test positivity estimates to produce a sm

SUBMITTER: McCabe R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10867655 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature