ArticleBMC public health2021
Estimation of the serial interval and proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission events of COVID- 19 in Ireland using contact tracing data.
Article in BMC public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 2 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- 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
- Estimating influenza transmission parameters: Comparing two study designs, 2023-2024.Epidemics · 2026Article
- Nonparametric serial interval estimation with uniform mixtures.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Best practices for estimating and reporting epidemiological delay distributions of infectious diseases.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Effective Reproduction Number of Smear-Positive Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Iran: A Registry-Based Study (2011-2021).Journal of research in health sciences · 2024Article
- Refining Estimation of the Instantaneous Reproduction Number During Early Pandemic Stages: Addressing Case-Reporting Variability and Serial Interval Uncertainty.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Improved time-varying reproduction numbers using the generation interval for COVID-19.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Re-Starting the Cruise Sector during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece: Assessing Effectiveness of Port Contingency Planning.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Identifying Contact Risks for SARS-CoV-2 Transmission to Healthcare Workers during Outbreak on COVID-19 Ward.Emerging infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Considerations for Improving Reporting and Analysis of Date-Based COVID-19 Surveillance Data by Public Health Agencies.American journal of public health · 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
21 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe serial interval is the period of time between the onset of symptoms in an infector and an infectee and is an important parameter which can impact on the estimation of the reproduction number. Whilst several parameters influencing infection transmission are expected to be consistent across populations, the serial interval can vary across and within populations over time. Therefore, local estimates are preferable for use in epidemiological models developed at a regional level. We used data collected as part of the national contact tracing process in Ireland to estimate the serial interval of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the Irish population, and to estimate the proportion of transmission events that occurred prior to the onset of symptoms.
resultsAfter data cleaning, the final dataset consisted of 471 infected close contacts from 471 primary cases. The median serial interval was 4 days, mean serial interval was 4.0 (95% confidence intervals 3.7, 4.3) days, whilst the 25th and 75th percentiles were 2 and 6 days respectively. We found that intervals were lower when the primary or secondary case were in the older age cohort (greater than 64 years). Simulating from an incubation period distribution from international literature, we estimated that 67% of transmission events had greater than 50% probability of occurring prior to the onset of symptoms in the infector.
conclusionsWhilst our analysis was based on a large sample size, data were collected for the primary purpose of interrupting transmission chains. Similar to other studies estimating the serial interval, our analysis is restricted to transmission pairs where the infector is known with some degree of certainty. Such pairs may represent more intense contacts with infected individuals than might occur in the overall population. It is therefore possible that our analysis is biased towards shorter serial intervals than the overall population.
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.