Diagnostic serial interval as a novel indicator for contact tracing effectiveness exemplified with the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The clinical onset serial interval is often used as a proxy for the transmission interval of an infectious disease. For SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, data on clinical onset serial intervals is limited, since symptom onset dates are not routinely recorded and do not exist in asymptomatic carriers.

Methods

We define the diagnostic serial interval as the time between the diagnosis dates of the infector and infectee. Based on the DS4C project data on SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 in South Korea, we estimate the means of the diagnostic serial interval, the clinical onset serial interval, and the difference between the two. We use the balanced cluster bootstrap method to construct 95% bootstrap confidence intervals.

Results

The mean of the diagnostic serial interval was estimated t

SUBMITTER: Mettler SK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7409974 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature