Spatio-temporal small area surveillance of the COVID-19 pandemic

The emergence of COVID-19 requires new effective tools for epidemiological surveillance. Spatio-temporal disease mapping models, which allow dealing with small units of analysis, are a priority in this context. These models provide geographically detailed and temporally updated overviews of the current state of the pandemic, making public health interventions more effective. These models also allow estimating epidemiological indicators highly demanded for COVID-19 surveillance, such as the instantaneous reproduction number