ArticlePloS one2023
Correcting the reproduction number for time-varying tests: A proposal and an application to COVID-19 in France.
Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 citations in OpenAlex.
- A comparative analysis of infection and mortality in reassessing africa's COVID-19 dynamic using time-varying tests.Communications medicine · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We provide a novel way to correct the effective reproduction number for the time-varying amount of tests, using the acceleration index (Baunez et al., 2021) as a simple measure of viral spread dynamics. Not correcting results in the reproduction number being a biased estimate of viral acceleration and we provide a formal decomposition of the resulting bias, involving the useful notions of test and infectivity intensities. When applied to French data for the COVID-19 pandemic (May 13, 2020-October 26, 2022), our decomposition shows that the reproduction number, when considered alone, characteristically underestimates the resurgence of the pandemic, compared to the acceleration index which accounts for the time-varying volume of tests. Because the acceleration index aggregates all relevant information and captures in real time the sizable time variation featured by viral circulation, it is a more parsimonious indicator to track the dynamics of an infectious disease outbreak in real time, compared to the equivalent alternative which would combine the reproduction number with the test and infectivity intensities.
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Registered trials
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