Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control

The individual infectiousness of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), quantified by the number of secondary cases of a typical index case, is conventionally modelled by a negative-binomial (NB) distribution. Based on patient data of 9120 confirmed cases in China, we calculated the variation of the i...

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Autores principales: He, Daihai, Zhao, Shi, Xu, Xiaoke, Lin, Qiangying, Zhuang, Zian, Cao, Peihua, Wang, Maggie H., Lou, Yijun, Xiao, Li, Wu, Ye, Yang, Lin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Correspondence
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7565242/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33066755
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09624-2
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author He, Daihai
Zhao, Shi
Xu, Xiaoke
Lin, Qiangying
Zhuang, Zian
Cao, Peihua
Wang, Maggie H.
Lou, Yijun
Xiao, Li
Wu, Ye
Yang, Lin
author_facet He, Daihai
Zhao, Shi
Xu, Xiaoke
Lin, Qiangying
Zhuang, Zian
Cao, Peihua
Wang, Maggie H.
Lou, Yijun
Xiao, Li
Wu, Ye
Yang, Lin
author_sort He, Daihai
collection PubMed
description The individual infectiousness of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), quantified by the number of secondary cases of a typical index case, is conventionally modelled by a negative-binomial (NB) distribution. Based on patient data of 9120 confirmed cases in China, we calculated the variation of the individual infectiousness, i.e., the dispersion parameter k of the NB distribution, at 0.70 (95% confidence interval: 0.59, 0.98). This suggests that the dispersion in the individual infectiousness is probably low, thus COVID-19 infection is relatively easy to sustain in the population and more challenging to control. Instead of focusing on the much fewer super spreading events, we also need to focus on almost every case to effectively reduce transmission.
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spelling pubmed-75652422020-10-16 Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control He, Daihai Zhao, Shi Xu, Xiaoke Lin, Qiangying Zhuang, Zian Cao, Peihua Wang, Maggie H. Lou, Yijun Xiao, Li Wu, Ye Yang, Lin BMC Public Health Correspondence The individual infectiousness of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), quantified by the number of secondary cases of a typical index case, is conventionally modelled by a negative-binomial (NB) distribution. Based on patient data of 9120 confirmed cases in China, we calculated the variation of the individual infectiousness, i.e., the dispersion parameter k of the NB distribution, at 0.70 (95% confidence interval: 0.59, 0.98). This suggests that the dispersion in the individual infectiousness is probably low, thus COVID-19 infection is relatively easy to sustain in the population and more challenging to control. Instead of focusing on the much fewer super spreading events, we also need to focus on almost every case to effectively reduce transmission. BioMed Central 2020-10-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7565242/ /pubmed/33066755 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09624-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Correspondence
He, Daihai
Zhao, Shi
Xu, Xiaoke
Lin, Qiangying
Zhuang, Zian
Cao, Peihua
Wang, Maggie H.
Lou, Yijun
Xiao, Li
Wu, Ye
Yang, Lin
Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title_full Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title_fullStr Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title_full_unstemmed Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title_short Low dispersion in the infectiousness of COVID-19 cases implies difficulty in control
title_sort low dispersion in the infectiousness of covid-19 cases implies difficulty in control
topic Correspondence
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7565242/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33066755
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09624-2
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