Identification of COVID-19 Waves: Considerations for Research and Policy

Andrés Ayala, Pablo Villalobos Dintrans, Felipe Elorrieta, Claudio Castillo, Claudio Vargas and Matilde Maddaleno
Additional contact information
Andrés Ayala: Departamento de Matemática y Ciencia de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile
Pablo Villalobos Dintrans: Programa Centro Salud Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile
Felipe Elorrieta: Departamento de Matemática y Ciencia de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile
Claudio Castillo: Programa Centro Salud Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile
Claudio Vargas: Departamento de Matemática y Ciencia de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile
Matilde Maddaleno: Programa Centro Salud Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago 9170022, Chile

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-8

Abstract: The identification of COVID-19 waves is a matter of the utmost importance, both for research and decision making. This study uses COVID-19 information from the 52 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region, Chile, and presents a quantitative method—based on weekly accumulated incidence rates—to define COVID-19 waves. We explore three different criteria to define the duration of a wave, and performed a sensitivity analysis using multivariate linear models to show their commonalities and differences. The results show that, compared to a benchmark definition (a 100-day wave), the estimations using longer periods of study are worse in terms of the model’s overall fit (adjusted R 2 ). The article shows that defining a COVID-19 wave is not necessarily simple, and has consequences when performing data analysis. The results highlight the need to adopt well-defined and well-justified definitions for COVID-19 waves, since these methodological choices can have an impact in research and policy making.

Keywords: COVID-19; waves; public health; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11058/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11058/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:21:p:11058-:d:661300

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().