A new Reproduction Index R i and its Usefulness for Germany’s Covid19-Data

  1. Robert N.J. Conradt

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Abstract

In the course of a large-scale infectious disease a time-dependent Reproduction rate is an important parameter for political, economic and social decisions. In this paper we focus on that parameter and introduce a mathematical implementation in addition to the mostly used definition of Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) in Germany.

Such value is of particular interest in order to serve as a criterion for possible Lock-Downs and “LockUps” in society and can provide deep insights into a pandemic event.

Both the definition of the new Reproduction index and the RKI’s Reproduction number are compared analytically, applied to simple model calculations and finally on real Covid19 data. Clear advantages of the new Reproduction index become apparent and some weaknesses of the RKI’s Reproduction number become clearly visible.

In addition we propose two additional ways of displaying pandemic data to have the pandemic behaviour at a glance. We find that some signatures of the pandemic appear now very well expressed - especially in conjunction with the new Reproduction index R i .

This all could be very helpful for future political, social and economic decisions.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.29.21254581: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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 10.1101/2021.03.29.21254581v1 on medRxiv