Using secondary cases to characterize the severity of an emerging or re-emerging infection.

ABSTRACT: The methods to ascertain cases of an emerging infectious disease are typically biased toward cases with more severe disease, which can bias the average infection-severity profile. Here, we conducted a systematic review to extract information on disease severity among index cases and secondary cases identified by contact tracing of index cases for COVID-19. We identified 38 studies to extract information on measures of clinical severity. The proportion of index cases with fever was 43% higher than for secondary cases. The proportion of symptomatic, hospitalized, and fatal illnesses among index cases were 12%, 126%, and 179% higher than for secondary cases, respectively. We developed a statistical model to utilize the severity difference, and estimate 55% of index cases were missed in Wuhan,

SUBMITTER: Tsang TK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8569220 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature