Estimation and Implication of Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK

Abstract

Infectious illness prevention and control is an important part of public health management. The early monitoring and numerical modelling of incidence data can help with the efficient prevention and control of infectious disease prevalence. The reproduction number R, as an essential index to understand the dynamics of COVID-19, can be predicted by using confirmed new incidence cases and serial interval data in the datasets provided by UK government. In this paper, an extended model is proposed to account for variable reporting rates instead of 1 for the estimation of the R number. The impact of using various modelling parameters is also evaluated, which provides insight into how to select a set of suitable parameters in modelling. The variation of the estimation of the R number by incorporating variable reporting rates can be observed and assessed.

Keywords

• reproduction number
• reporting rates
• incidence cases
• serial interval distribution
• COVID-19