Time-Varying COVID-19 Reproduction Number in the United States

  1. Douglas D. Gunzler
  2. Ashwini R. Sehgal

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Abstract

The basic reproduction number is the average number of people to whom an infected person transmits the infection when virtually all individuals in a population are susceptible. We sought to calculate the current reproduction number for COVID-19 for each state in the United States. For the entire United States, the time-varying reproduction number declined from 4.02 to 1.51 between March 17 and April 1, 2020. We also found that the time-varying reproduction number for COVID-19 has declined in most states over the same two week period which suggests that social isolation measures may be having a beneficial effect.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.10.20060863: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Other limitations include the lack of United States data on serial intervals, daily reproduction numbers can be highly variable and the small numbers of cases in some states.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.10.20060863v1 on medRxiv