Beyond R0: the importance of contact tracing when predicting epidemics

2020-02-12 epidemiology Title + abstract only

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The basic reproductive number -- R0 -- is one of the most common and most commonly misapplied numbers in public health. Although often used to compare outbreaks and forecast pandemic risk, this single number belies the complexity that two different pathogens can exhibit, even when they have the same R0 [1-3]. Here, we show how to predict outbreak size using estimates of the distribution of secondary infections, leveraging both its average R0 and the underlying heterogeneity. To do so, we reformu...

Beyond R0: the importance of contact tracing when predicting epidemics

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