Using Proper Mean Generation Intervals in Modeling of COVID-19.
Front Public Health
; 9: 691262, 2021.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1320592
ABSTRACT
In susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) epidemic models, with the exponentially distributed duration of exposed/infectious statuses, the mean generation interval (GI, time lag between infections of a primary case and its secondary case) equals the mean latent period (LP) plus the mean infectious period (IP). It was widely reported that the GI for COVID-19 is as short as 5 days. However, many works in top journals used longer LP or IP with the sum (i.e., GI), e.g., >7 days. This discrepancy will lead to overestimated basic reproductive number and exaggerated expectation of infection attack rate (AR) and control efficacy. We argue that it is important to use suitable epidemiological parameter values for proper estimation/prediction. Furthermore, we propose an epidemic model to assess the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 for Belgium, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We estimated a time-varying reproductive number [R0(t)] based on the COVID-19 deaths data and we found that Belgium has the highest AR followed by Israel and the UAE.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
/
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Front Public Health
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Fpubh.2021.691262
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