Nine-month Trend of Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers of COVID-19 in West of Iran

Abstract

Background: The basic reproduction number (R₀) is an important concept in infectious disease epidemiology and the most important parameter to determine the transmissibility of a pathogen. This study aimed to estimate the nine-month trend of time-varying R of COVID-19 epidemic using the serial interval (SI) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Lorestan, west of Iran.

Study design: Descriptive study.

Methods: This study was conducted based on a cross-sectional method. The SI distribution was extracted from data and log-normal, Weibull, and Gamma models were fitted. The estimation of time-varying R₀, a likelihood-based model was applied, which uses pairs of cases to estimate relative likelihood.

Results: In this study, R_t was estimated for SI 7-day and 14-day time-lapses from 27 February-14 November 2020. To check the robustness of the R₀ estimations, sensitivity analysis was performed using different SI distributions to estimate the reproduction number in 7-day and 14-day time-lapses. The R₀ ranged from 0.56 to 4.97 and 0.76 to 2.47 for 7-day and 14-day time-lapses. The doubling time was estimated to be 75.51 days (95% CI: 70.41, 81.41).

Conclusions: Low R₀ of COVID-19 in some periods in Lorestan, west of Iran, could be an indication of preventive interventions, namely quarantine and isolation. To control the spread of the disease, the reproduction number should be reduced by decreasing the transmission and contact rates and shortening the infectious period.