Fitting outbreak models to data from many small norovirus outbreaks.

ABSTRACT: Infectious disease often occurs in small, independent outbreaks in populations with varying characteristics. Each outbreak by itself may provide too little information for accurate estimation of epidemic model parameters. Here we show that using standard stochastic epidemic models for each outbreak and allowing parameters to vary between outbreaks according to a linear predictor leads to a generalized linear model that accurately estimates parameters from many small and diverse outbreaks. By estimating initial growth rates in addition to transmission rates, we are able to characterize variation in numbers of initially susceptible individuals or contact patterns between outbreaks. With simulation, we find that the estimates are fairly robust to the data being collected at discrete intervals

SUBMITTER: O'Dea EB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4218779 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature