ArticleEpidemics2016
Estimating infectious disease transmission distances using the overall distribution of cases.
Article in Epidemics, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Disruption of spatiotemporal clustering in dengue cases by wMel Wolbachia in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- Estimation of transmission distance between cases of (re-)emerging respiratory infectious diseases and its potential application in outbreak response.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Detection of Long-Distance Transmission Events During the CSF Epidemic in Japan Using Whole-Genome-Sequence Data.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2025Article
- Reconstruction and analysis of the transmission network of African swine fever in People's Republic of China, August 2018-September 2019.Epidemiology and infection · 2024Article
- Age-specific transmission dynamics under suppression control measures during SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2 epidemic.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Quantitative assessment of the effects of massive nucleic acid testing in controlling a COVID-19 outbreak.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Spatial scale of tuberculosis transmission in Lima, Peru.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Effects of human mobility and behavior on disease transmission in a COVID-19 mathematical model.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Inferring person-to-person networks of Plasmodium falciparum transmission: are analyses of routine surveillance data up to the task?Malaria journal · 2022Article
- Sample size calculation for phylogenetic case linkage.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- An SIR-type epidemiological model that integrates social distancing as a dynamic law based on point prevalence and socio-behavioral factors.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Continuous learning and inference of individual probability of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on interaction data.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Social structure defines spatial transmission of African swine fever in wild boar.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Characterizing the impact of spatial clustering of susceptibility for measles elimination.Vaccine · 2019Article
- Estimating spatiotemporally varying malaria reproduction numbers in a near elimination setting.Nature communications · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The average spatial distance between transmission-linked cases is a fundamental property of infectious disease dispersal. However, the distance between a case and their infector is rarely measurable. Contact-tracing investigations are resource intensive or even impossible, particularly when only a subset of cases are detected. Here, we developed an approach that uses onset dates, the generation time distribution and location information to estimate the mean transmission distance. We tested our method using outbreak simulations. We then applied it to the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak in Cumbria, UK, and compared our results to contact-tracing activities. In simulations with a true mean distance of 106m, the average mean distance estimated was 109m when cases were fully observed (95% range of 71-142). Estimates remained consistent with the true mean distance when only five percent of cases were observed, (average estimate of 128m, 95% range 87-165). Estimates were robust to spatial heterogeneity in the underlying population. We estimated that both the mean and the standard deviation of the transmission distance during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak was 8.9km (95% CI: 8.4km-9.7km). Contact-tracing activities found similar values of 6.3km (5.2km-7.4km) and 11.2km (9.5km-12.8km), respectively. We were also able to capture the drop in mean transmission distance over the course of the outbreak. Our approach is applicable across diseases, robust to under-reporting and can inform interventions and surveillance.
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