Estimating SARS-CoV-2 reproduction number by infection location in Japan

  1. Junko Kurita
  2. Takahide Hata
  3. Tamie Sugawara
  4. Yasushi Ohkusa
  5. Atsuko Hata

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Abstract

Background

COVID-19 infectiousness might differ by infection location. Nevertheless, no such study of infectiousness has been reported.

Object

The study objective was estimation of the reproduction number by infection location.

Method

Patients who infected no one were ignored because their reliability might be lower than that of patients who infected more than one person. On the assumption that the histogram follows an exponential distribution, we estimated the reproduction number from the histogram of the number of people infected by the same patient.

Results

Night entertainment venues showed the greatest infectiousness, followed by facilities for elderly people and hospitals. Nursery schools and workplaces were followed by homes, with the lowest infectiousness.

Discussion and Conclusion

Countermeasures under the second declaration of emergency status targeted restaurants. However, infectiousness at restaurants was not high. Comparable to those of universities and karaoke, and not significantly different from homes: the least infectious location studied.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255296v2 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255296: (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: 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The present study has some limitations. First, because infectiousness in all places were not significantly different as results, data might be insufficient to do our procedure. When we accumulate the data, it might be solved partially. Second, because of data limitations, we cannot analyze characteristics such as those of patients or hospital staff, residents or staff at a facility for elderly persons, or students and teachers at a school. For example, infectiousness among students in school or among kids in nursery school, or of medical staff to patients are probably very important factors to control the outbreak. To resolve that difficulty to some degree, data accumulation is expected to be necessary in the near future. Thirdly, seasonality of infectiousness might be fundamentally important, as it has come to be for influenza. Because data used for this study were accumulated through July, we are unable to evaluate them. In winter, data must also be analyzed similarly. Risk related to location must be evaluated.

    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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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255296v1 on medRxiv