Serial interval in determining the estimation of reproduction number of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) during the early outbreak
Shi Zhao, Peihua Cao, Daozhou Gao, Zian Zhuang, Yongli Cai, Jinjun Ran, Ka Chun Chong, Kai Wang, Yijun Lou, Weiming Wang, Lin Yang, Daihai He, Maggie Haitian Wang
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 , caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged in Wuhan, China in the end of 2019 and soon spread overseas. A comprehensive and timely review summarized the scientific research in estimating the basic reproduction number (R 0 ) released from 1 January to 7 February 2020 During the early outbreak, when the key epidemiological features of COVID-19 were uncovered, the R 0 estimation largely relied on the growth rate of the epidemic curve and the estimation of the serial interval (SI). Here, we demonstrated that an overlarge SI would lead to overestimation of R 0 .