ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2020
Serial interval of SARS-CoV-2 was shortened over time by nonpharmaceutical interventions.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04816318 (Policy Responses Against the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America), which is not on this map. Cited by 205 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Policy Responses Against the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America: Interrupted Series Analyses of Local Governments
Who cites it
205 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 395 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing changes in incubation period, serial interval, and generation time of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Rapid review and meta-analysis of serial intervals for SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Pooled it
- The methodologies to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions during COVID-19: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Reliability of Early Estimates of the Basic Reproduction Number of COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 serial intervals and the impact of parameter uncertainty on the coronavirus disease 2019 reproduction number.Statistical methods in medical research · 2022Pooled it
- Presymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection: a secondary analysis using published data.BMJ open · 2021Pooled it
- Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2020Pooled it
- Key questions for modelling COVID-19 exit strategies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Pooled it
- A systematic comparison of methodologies for the estimation of the serial interval.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Robust estimation of the time-dependent reproduction number in the presence of weekend reporting effects.BMC global and public health · 2026Article
- Network structure induced bias in estimates of intrinsic generation times.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- VIBES: A multiscale modeling approach integrating within-host and between-hosts dynamics in epidemics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Geographical Variation in SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Potential in Massachusetts.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Measuring real-time disease transmissibility with temperature-dependent generation intervals.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Unlocking the power of time-since-infection models: data augmentation for improved instantaneous reproduction number estimation.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Article
- Daily profile of COVID-19 infections in Europe - a biophysical perspective.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Review
- Estimation of the epidemiological characteristics of scabies.Nature communications · 2025Review
- COVID-19 Transmission Potential and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions in Maine During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
145 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Studies of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), have reported varying estimates of epidemiological parameters, including serial interval distributions-i.e., the time between illness onset in successive cases in a transmission chain-and reproduction numbers. By compiling a line-list database of transmission pairs in mainland China, we show that mean serial intervals of COVID-19 shortened substantially from 7.8 to 2.6 days within a month (9 January to 13 February 2020). This change was driven by enhanced nonpharmaceutical interventions, particularly case isolation. We also show that using real-time estimation of serial intervals allowing for variation over time provides more accurate estimates of reproduction numbers than using conventionally fixed serial interval distributions. These findings could improve our ability to assess transmission dynamics, forecast future incidence, and estimate the impact of control measures.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.