Throughout the current epidemic there has been considerable focus on, and some controversy around, the use of the R-number as a headline summary of the state of the epidemic.
We held an online Special Topic Meeting held over three sessions on Wednesday 9 June and Friday 11 June 2021 to discuss statistical issues around the general topic of covid transmission. The meeting was organised and chaired by Peter Diggle and Sylvia Richardson.
In the tradition of RSS Discussion Meetings, the programme consisted of oral presentations based on written papers that were made available beforehand, followed by open discussion contributions and responses from the authors, all of which will be published as a permanent record in the RSS Series A Journal.
Preprints of the documents are available to read as follows:
Session 1
Are epidemic growth rates more informative than reproduction numbers? - Kris V. Parag, Robin N. Thompson, Christl A. Donnelly
On the use of the reproduction number for SARS-CoV-2: Estimation, misinterpretations, and relationships with other ecological measures - Nicholas Jewell and Joe Lewnard
Predicting epidemics and the impact of interventions in heterogeneous settings: standard SEIR models are too pessimistic - Luc E. Coffeng, Sake J. de Vlas
Contributions from invited discussants
Contributions from open discussion participants
Replies to discussion
Session 2
Efficient Bayesian Inference of Instantaneous Reproduction Numbers at Fine Spatial Scales, with an Application to Mapping and Nowcasting the Covid-19 Epidemic in British Local Authorities - Yee Whye Teh, Avishkar Bhoopchand, Peter Diggle, Bryn Elesedy, Bobby He, Michael Hutchinson, Ulrich Paquet, Jonathan Read, Nenad Tomasev, Sheheryar Zaidi
A Covid-19 Model for Local Authorities of the United Kingdom - Swapnil Mishra, Jamie Scott, Daniel J. Laydon, Harrison Zhu, Neil M. Ferguson, Samir Bhatt, Seth Flaxman, Axel Gandy
Contributions from invited discussants
Contributions from open discussion participants
Replies to discussion
Session 3
Estimation of the effective reproduction number in real-time: conceptual and statistical challenges - Lorenzo Pellis, Paul Birrell, Joshua Blake, JUNIPER consortium, Daniela De Angelis
Consortium Assessing the effect of school closures on the spread of COVID-19 in Zurich - Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar, Leonhard Held on behalf of the SUSPend modelling
Contributions from invited discussants
Contributions from open discussion participants
Replies to discussion