Refining Reproduction Number Estimates to Account for Unobserved Generations of Infection in Emerging Epidemics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Estimating the transmissibility of infectious diseases is key to inform situational awareness and for response planning. Several methods tend to overestimate the basic (R0) and effective (Rt) reproduction numbers during the initial phases of an epidemic. In this work we explore the impact of incomplete observations and underreporting of the first generations of infections during the initial epidemic phase.

Methods

We propose a debiasing procedure that utilizes a linear exponential growth model to infer unobserved initial generations of infections and apply it to EpiEstim. We assess the performance of our adjustment using simulated data, considering different levels of transmissibility and reporting rates. We also apply the proposed correction to severe acute respi

SUBMITTER: Brizzi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9402635 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature