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Time-varying transmission heterogeneity of SARS and COVID-19 in Hong Kong (preprint)
researchsquare; 2022.
Preprint
in English
| PREPRINT-RESEARCHSQUARE | ID: ppzbmed-10.21203.rs.3.rs-1407962.v1
ABSTRACT
Transmission heterogeneity is a notable feature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemics, though previous efforts to estimate how heterogeneity changes over time are limited. Using contact tracing data, we compared the epidemiology of SARS and COVID-19 infection in Hong Kong in 2003 and 2020-21 and estimated time-varying transmission heterogeneity (kt) by fitting negative binomial models to offspring distributions generated across variable observation windows. kt fluctuated over time for both COVID-19 and SARS on a continuous scale though SARS exhibited significantly greater (p < 0.001) heterogeneity compared to COVID-19 overall and in-time. For COVID-19, kt declined over time and was significantly associated with increasingly stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions though similar evidence for SARS was inconclusive. Underdetection of sporadic COVID-19 cases led to a moderate overestimation of kt, indicating COVID-19 heterogeneity of could be greater than observed. Time-varying or real-time estimates of transmission heterogeneity could become a critical indicator for epidemic intelligence in the future.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Preprints
Database:
PREPRINT-RESEARCHSQUARE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Preprint
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