ArticleClinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America2021
A Comparative Analysis of Statistical Methods to Estimate the Reproduction Number in Emerging Epidemics, With Implications for the Current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic.
Article in Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Combining and comparing regional SARS-CoV-2 epidemic dynamics in Italy: Bayesian meta-analysis of compartmental models and global sensitivity analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Basic reproduction number varies markedly between closely related pandemic Escherichia coli clones.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Updating Reproduction Number Estimates for Mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo Using Surveillance Data.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Pandemic potential of the Nipah virus and public health strategies adopted during outbreaks: Lessons from Kerala, India.PLOS global public health · 2024Review
- Increasing situational awareness through nowcasting of the reproduction number.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Why are different estimates of the effective reproductive number so different? A case study on COVID-19 in Germany.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Estimates of mpox effective reproduction number in Spain, April-August 2022.Epidemiology and infection · 2023Article
- Assessing the heterogeneity in the transmission of infectious diseases from time series of epidemiological data.PloS one · 2023Article
- Estimating the basic reproduction number from noisy daily data.Journal of theoretical biology · 2022Article
- Refining Reproduction Number Estimates to Account for Unobserved Generations of Infection in Emerging Epidemics.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2022Article
- The role of inter-regional mobility in forecasting SARS-CoV-2 transmission.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Does COVID-19 lockdowns have impacted on global dengue burden? A special focus to India.BMC public health · 2022Article
- On the use of the reproduction number for SARS-CoV-2: Estimation, misinterpretations and relationships with other ecological measures.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society) · 2022Article
- Trade, uneven development and people in motion: Used territories and the initial spread of COVID-19 in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean.Socio-economic planning sciences · 2022Article
- A comparative study on the three calculation methods for reproduction numbers of COVID-19.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Impact of tiered restrictions on human activities and the epidemiology of the second wave of COVID-19 in Italy.Nature communications · 2021Article
- A mechanistic and data-driven reconstruction of the time-varying reproduction number: Application to the COVID-19 epidemic.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Time-varying Reproduction Numbers of COVID-19 in Georgia, USA, March 2, 2020 to November 20, 2020.The Permanente journal · 2021Article
- Epidemiology and Clinical Course of First Wave Coronavirus Disease Cases, Faroe Islands.Emerging infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Estimating and explaining the spread of COVID-19 at the county level in the USA.Communications biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAs the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic continues its rapid global spread, quantification of local transmission patterns has been, and will continue to be, critical for guiding the pandemic response. Understanding the accuracy and limitations of statistical methods to estimate the basic reproduction number, R0, in the context of emerging epidemics is therefore vital to ensure appropriate interpretation of results and the subsequent implications for control efforts.
methodsUsing simulated epidemic data, we assess the performance of 7 commonly used statistical methods to estimate R0 as they would be applied in a real-time outbreak analysis scenario: fitting to an increasing number of data points over time and with varying levels of random noise in the data. Method comparison was also conducted on empirical outbreak data, using Zika surveillance data from the 2015-2016 epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean.
resultsWe find that most methods considered here frequently overestimate R0 in the early stages of epidemic growth on simulated data, the magnitude of which decreases when fitted to an increasing number of time points. This trend of decreasing bias over time can easily lead to incorrect conclusions about the course of the epidemic or the need for control efforts.
conclusionsWe show that true changes in pathogen transmissibility can be difficult to disentangle from changes in methodological accuracy and precision in the early stages of epidemic growth, particularly for data with significant over-dispersion. As localized epidemics of SARS-CoV-2 take hold around the globe, awareness of this trend will be important for appropriately cautious interpretation of results and subsequent guidance for control efforts.
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.