Estimating the Reproductive Number of an Influenza Pandemic

An influenza pandemic is the outcome of an interaction between two populations - the human immune system and the new variant of the influenza A virus - each with very different demographic characteristics. Accurate real-time estimation of the parameters of this interaction, together with their confidence intervals, would be of enormous help to health planners.

Together with Jim Oeppen from the MPIDR and Paul H.C. Eilers from the Erasmus Medical Center, I proposed a model which aims to improve the estimation of the daily Reproductive Number (R0) of past pandemics in their growth phase (NRR in demographic terms), while explicitly accounting for the mis-recording created by week-ends and public holidays.

When R0 is greater than unity a pandemic continues to grow, so the evolution of this crucial parameter is an indicator of the need for intervention and a measure of its success or failure.

We presented a poster and a paper about this approach at the 2012 annual meeting of the Population Association of America and at the 2012 European Population Conference: Estimating the Reproductive Number of an influenza epidemic

from data with Day-of-the-Week reporting biases (extended abstract).

In the former venue we have been awarded of the Blue Ribbon Poster Award: here the link to the PAA site, the winning poster and more information about the award from the associated MPIDR announcement. The slides presented at the EPC 2012 are given at the following link.