Complexity of the Basic Reproduction Number (R0)
By Paul L. Delamater, Erica J. Street, Timothy F. Leslie, Y. T. Yang, K. Jacobsen. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2019
865 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The basic reproduction number (R0), also called the basic reproduction ratio or rate or the basic reproductive rate, is an epidemiologic metric used to describe the contagiousness or transmissibility of infectious agents. R0 is affected by numerous biological, sociobehavioral, and environmental factors that govern pathogen transmission and, therefore, is usually estimated with various types of complex mathematical models, which make R0 easily misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misapplied. R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen, a rate over time, or a measure of disease severity, and R0 cannot be modified through vaccination campaigns. R0 is rarely measured directly, and modeled R0 values are dependent on model structures and assumptions. Some R0 values reported in the scientific literature are likely obsolete. R0 must be estimated, reported, and applied with great caution because this basic metric is far from simple.
Subfields: Genetics, Modeling and Simulation, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/474a21155b939631d05a699612b656e07a844850
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Citations in the corpus
- Pathogenicity and transmissibility of 2019-nCoV—A quick overview and comparison with other emerging viruses (2020, neutral): “It should be noted that estimation of R0 during the pre-epidemic stage can be plagued by data uncertainty and variability [13].”
- COVID-19: Epidemiology, Evolution, and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (2020, neutral): “However, it is worth noting that R0 estimates may vary upon numerous biologic, socio-behavioral, and environmental factors, and must be interpreted with caution [28].”
- SARS-CoV-2 and Coronavirus Disease 2019: What We Know So Far (2020, background): “The reproduction number, or “R naught” (R0), is a mathematical term that defines contagiousness [30].”
- Estimation of the reproductive number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the probable outbreak size on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: A data-driven analysis (2020, background): “Otherwise, the R0 value is affected by environmental circumstances, demography, statistical caliber, and modeling methodology (Delamater et al., 2019).”