Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37009864›Full record

ArticleVirology journal2023

A comparison of transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.

S S Manathunga, I A Abeyagunawardena, S D Dharmaratne

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Virology journal, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
39citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
14.1field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 65 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
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  6. Real-time spatiotemporal tracking of infectious outbreaks in confined environments with a host-pathogen agent-based system.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

S S ManathungaNational Hospital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
I A AbeyagunawardenaNational Hospital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, Sri Lanka. ishanya1993@gmail.com.ORCID 0000-0003-0395-7863
S D DharmaratneDepartment of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Peradeniya, Kandy, Sri Lanka.
National Hospital of Sri Lanka · LKUniversity of Peradeniya · LK

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe World Health Organization (WHO) has currently detected five Variants of Concern of SARS-CoV-2 having the WHO labels of 'Alpha', 'Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta' and 'Omicron'. We aimed to assess and compare the transmissibility of the five VOCs in terms of basic reproduction number, time-varying reproduction number and growth rate.

methodsPublicly available data on the number of analyzed sequences over two-week windows for each country were extracted from covariants.org and GISAID initiative database. The ten countries which reported the highest number of analyzed sequences for each of the five variants were included in the final dataset and was analyzed using R language. The epidemic curves for each variant were estimated utilizing the two-weekly discretized incidence data using local regression (LOESS) models. The basic reproduction number was estimated with the exponential growth rate method. The time-varying reproduction number was calculated for the estimated epidemic curves by the ratio of the number of new infections generated at time step t to the total infectiousness of infected individuals at time t, using the EpiEstim package.

resultsThe highest R0 for the variants Alpha (1.22), Beta (1.19), Gamma (1.21), Delta (1.38) and Omicron (1.90) were reported from Japan, Belgium, the United States, France and South Africa, respectively. Nine out of ten epidemic curves with the highest estimated growth rates and reproduction numbers were due to the Omicron variant indicating the highest transmissibility.

conclusionsThe transmissibility was highest in the Omicron variant followed by Delta, Alpha, Gamma and Beta respectively.

Indexed as

COVID-19SARS-CoV-2Basic Reproduction NumberDatabases, FactualHumansCoronavirusCOVID-19 variantsTransmissibility

Identifiers

PMID37009864
PMCPMC10067514
OpenAlexW4362520792

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.