A comprehensive estimation of country-level basic reproduction numbers R0 for COVID-19: Regime regression can automatically estimate the end of the exponential phase in epidemic data.

ABSTRACT: In a compartmental epidemic model, the initial exponential phase reflects a fixed interaction between an infectious agent and a susceptible population in steady state, so it determines the basic reproduction number R0 on its own. After the exponential phase, dynamic complexities like societal responses muddy the practical interpretation of many estimated parameters. The computer program ARRP, already available from sequence alignment applications, automatically estimated the end of the exponential phase in COVID-19 and extracted the exponential growth rate r for 160 countries. By positing a gamma-distributed generation time, the exponential growth method then yielded R0 estimates for COVID-19 in 160 countries. The use of ARRP ensured that the R0 estimates were largely freed from any depend

SUBMITTER: Spouge JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8277067 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature