Practical considerations for measuring the effective reproductive number, Rt.

ABSTRACT: Estimation of the effective reproductive number Rt is important for detecting changes in disease transmission over time. During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, policy makers and public health officials are using Rt to assess the effectiveness of interventions and to inform policy. However, estimation of Rt from available data presents several challenges, with critical implications for the interpretation of the course of the pandemic. The purpose of this document is to summarize these challenges, illustrate them with examples from synthetic data, and, where possible, make recommendations. For near real-time estimation of Rt, we recommend the approach of Cori and colleagues, which uses data from before time t and empirical estimates of the distribution of time between infec

SUBMITTER: Gostic KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7728287 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature