Heterogenity in Disease Transmission Parameters

• Activity Number: 634
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Laura Forsberg White*+ and Marcello Pagano and Brett Archer
• Companies: Boston University School of Public Health and Harvard School of Public Health and National Institute for Communicable Diseases
• Keywords: Basic reproductive number ; serial interval ; disease outbreak ; influenza

Abstract

In an outbreak setting there is great interest in rapidly estimating important parameters, such as the reproductive number, attack rates and serial interval. Typically estimation of these parameters, including the reproductive number and serial interval, assumes homogeneity in these values across large populations. Some work has shown varying transmission among age groups in influenza outbreaks. However, most estimates of these parameters in an unfolding disease outbreak tend to be averages over large populations, such as countries. This is likely attributable to a dearth in easily-implemented methods that can estimate these parameters in near real time. We illustrate the variability in the reproductive number across demographic categories, such as age, as well as geographical regions in several unfolding outbreaks of infectious disease. We further show how to incorporate this information in rapid estimation of transmission parameters. Integration of these pieces of information leads to much more precise estimates and a greater understanding of the dynamics of a disease outbreak over a large population.