Inferring time-varying generation time, serial interval, and incubation period distributions for COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: The generation time distribution, reflecting the time between successive infections in transmission chains, is a key epidemiological parameter for describing COVID-19 transmission dynamics. However, because exact infection times are rarely known, it is often approximated by the serial interval distribution. This approximation holds under the assumption that infectors and infectees share the same incubation period distribution, which may not always be true. We estimated incubation period and serial interval distributions using 629 transmission pairs reconstructed by investigating 2989 confirmed cases in China in January-February 2020, and developed an inferential framework to estimate the generation time distribution that accounts for variation over time due to changes in epidemiology, samp

SUBMITTER: Chen D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9747081 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature