Differential contagiousness of respiratory disease across the United States

Abhishek Mallela; Yen Ting Lin; William S. Hlavacek

Epidemics (Dec 2023)

Differential contagiousness of respiratory disease across the United States

Abhishek Mallela,
Yen Ting Lin,
William S. Hlavacek

Affiliations

Abhishek Mallela: Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA; Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
Yen Ting Lin: Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA; Information Sciences Group, Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
William S. Hlavacek: Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA; Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA; Corresponding author at: Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.

Journal volume & issue: Vol. 45
p. 100718

Abstract

Read online

The initial contagiousness of a communicable disease within a given population is quantified by the basic reproduction number, R0. This number depends on both pathogen and population properties. On the basis of compartmental models that reproduce Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) surveillance data, we used Bayesian inference and the next-generation matrix approach to estimate region-specific R0 values for 280 of 384 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States (US), which account for 95% of the US population living in urban areas and 82% of the total population. We focused on MSA populations after finding that these populations were more uniformly impacted by COVID-19 than state populations. Our maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimates for R0 range from 1.9 to 7.7 and quantify the relative susceptibilities of regional populations to spread of respiratory diseases. One-Sentence Summary: Initial contagiousness of Coronavirus Disease 2019 varied over a 4-fold range across urban areas of the United States.

Published in Epidemics

ISSN: 1755-4365 (Print); 1878-0067 (Online)
Publisher: Elsevier
Country of publisher: Netherlands
LCC subjects: Medicine: Internal medicine: Infectious and parasitic diseases
Website: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/epidemics/

About the journal

Abstract

Keywords