Early detection of variants of concern via funnel plots of regional reproduction numbers.
Sci Rep
; 13(1): 1052, 2023 01 19.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2186064
ABSTRACT
Early detection of the emergence of a new variant of concern (VoC) is essential to develop strategies that contain epidemic outbreaks. For example, knowing in which region a VoC starts spreading enables prompt actions to circumscribe the geographical area where the new variant can spread, by containing it locally. This paper presents 'funnel plots' as a statistical process control method that, unlike tools whose purpose is to identify rises of the reproduction number ([Formula see text]), detects when a regional [Formula see text] departs from the national average and thus represents an anomaly. The name of the method refers to the funnel-like shape of the scatter plot that the data take on. Control limits with prescribed false alarm rate are derived from the observation that regional [Formula see text]'s are normally distributed with variance inversely proportional to the number of infectious cases. The method is validated on public COVID-19 data demonstrating its efficacy in the early detection of SARS-CoV-2 variants in India, South Africa, England, and Italy, as well as of a malfunctioning episode of the diagnostic infrastructure in England, during which the Immensa lab in Wolverhampton gave 43,000 incorrect negative tests relative to South West and West Midlands territories.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Communicable Diseases
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Topics:
Variants
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Sci Rep
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S41598-022-27116-8
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