ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2021
Estimating epidemiologic dynamics from cross-sectional viral load distributions.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 150 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
150 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review on the association between respiratory virus real-time PCR cycle threshold values and clinical presentation or outcomes.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2021Pooled it
- Efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating in Brazil.Nature communications · 2021Trial
- Periodic shifts in viral load increase risk of Hendra virus spillover fromScience advances · 2026Article
- Quantitative analysis of massive SARS-CoV-2 testing in the community in France in 2021-2022 reveals the associations of variant, vaccination, and age with viral dynamics in symptomatic individuals.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Viral variant but not host factors associate with SARS-CoV-2 viral kinetics.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Individual and population level uncertainty interact to determine the performance of outbreak surveillance systems.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Effectiveness of voluntary PCR testing against COVID-19 spread in remote Japanese islands.Epidemiology and infection · 2026Article
- Article
- Estimating COVID-19 incidence and prevalence using lateral flow tests in England and Scotland, 2023-2024.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Diagnostic accuracy study of the multiplex Truenat MTB Ultima/COVID-19 assay for simultaneous detection of Tuberculosis and SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19).PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Nationwide population-level influenza cycle threshold values and trends in influenza incidence: a longitudinal study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Understanding pandemics through molecular gas dynamics.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Should public health policy exempt cases with low viral load from isolation during an epidemic?: a modelling study.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Random time-shift approximation enables hierarchical Bayesian inference of mechanistic within-host viral dynamics models on large datasets.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Nowcasting epidemic trends using hospital- and community-based virologic test data.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Cycle threshold values and SARS-CoV-2 variant associations with breakthrough infections: a retrospective study in Accra, Ghana.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- A Bayesian model for repeated cross-sectional epidemic prevalence survey data.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Generalizing population RT-qPCR cycle threshold values-informed estimation of epidemiological dynamics: Impact of surveillance practices and pathogen variability.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
90 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Estimating an epidemic's trajectory is crucial for developing public health responses to infectious diseases, but case data used for such estimation are confounded by variable testing practices. We show that the population distribution of viral loads observed under random or symptom-based surveillance-in the form of cycle threshold (Ct) values obtained from reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction testing-changes during an epidemic. Thus, Ct values from even limited numbers of random samples can provide improved estimates of an epidemic's trajectory. Combining data from multiple such samples improves the precision and robustness of this estimation. We apply our methods to Ct values from surveillance conducted during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in a variety of settings and offer alternative approaches for real-time estimates of epidemic trajectories for outbreak management and response.
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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.