Questioning the use of global estimates of reproduction numbers, with implications for policy
The basic reproduction number, $R_0$ is an important and widely used concept in the study of infectious diseases. We briefly review the recent trend of calculating the average of various $R_0$ estimates in systematic reviews aimed at estimating the basic reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2, and discuss the drawbacks and implications of using such averaging methods. Additionally, we argue that even a theoretically grounded approach such as next generation matrix could have practical impediments in its use. More generally, the practice of associating an infectious disease with a single value of $R_0$ is problematic, when the disease can, in fact have different reproduction numbers in various populations.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Scalable Distributed Reproduction Numbers of Network Epidemics with Differential Privacy
Reproduction numbers are widely used for the estimation and prediction of epidemic spreading processes over networks. However, conventional reproduction numbers of an overall network do not indicate where an epidemic is …
Global and Distributed Reproduction Numbers of a Multilayer SIR Model with an Infrastructure Network
In this paper, we propose an SIR spread model in a population network coupled with an infrastructure network that has a pathogen spreading in it. We develop a threshold condition to characterize the monotonicity and peak…
Estimating the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany via spline-based hierarchical modelling of death counts
The effective reproduction number is a key figure to monitor the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study we consider a retrospective modelling approach for estimating the effective reproduction number based on dea…
Reproduction numbers for epidemic models with households and other social structures II: comparisons and implications for vaccination
In this paper we consider epidemic models of directly transmissible SIR (susceptible $\to$ infective $\to$ recovered) and SEIR (with an additional latent class) infections in fully-susceptible populations with a social s…
Conditional Inverse Learning of Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers Inference
Estimating time-varying reproduction numbers from epidemic incidence data is a central task in infectious disease surveillance, yet it poses an inherently ill-posed inverse problem. Existing approaches often rely on stro…