Biostatistics Weekly Seminar

Close contacts groups such as households and schools are ideal venues for understanding transmission characteristics of infectious diseases and for evaluating intervention effectiveness, due to the feasibility of tracking individual-level exposure history. However, observation of such transmission dynamics is often incomplete due to limited resources. For example, influenza outbreaks in institutional settings (e.g., schools and workplaces) were reported and investigated only if there were 10 or more cases of influenza-like illness. Another example is household studies of influenza or SARS-CoV-2, where the follow-up period is often short because specimen collection is frequent. Ignoring these issues inevitably lead to biased and inefficient estimation of key transmission parameters. In this talk, we focus on statistical methods addressing the following issues: (1) surveillance bias towards large outbreaks; (2) heterogeneity in exposure levels; and (3) short follow-up period. The proposed methods are evaluated in simulated epidemics and applied to school outbreaks of influenza in China.

Hybrid: Meeting Room and Zoom Link to Follow
23 August 2023
1:30pm