Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
A Generalized-Growth Model To Characterize The Early Ascending Phase Of Infectious Disease Outbreaks, Cecile Viboud, Lone Simonsen, Gerardo Chowell
A Generalized-Growth Model To Characterize The Early Ascending Phase Of Infectious Disease Outbreaks, Cecile Viboud, Lone Simonsen, Gerardo Chowell
Global Health Faculty Publications
Background
A better characterization of the early growth dynamics of an epidemic is needed to dissect the important drivers of disease transmission, refine existing transmission models, and improve disease forecasts.
Materials and methods
We introduce a 2-parameter generalized-growth model to characterize the ascending phase of an outbreak and capture epidemic profiles ranging from sub-exponential to exponential growth. We test the model against empirical outbreak data representing a variety of viral pathogens in historic and contemporary populations, and provide simulations highlighting the importance of sub-exponential growth for forecasting purposes.
Results
We applied the generalized-growth model to 20 infectious disease outbreaks representing …