The Acceleration Index as a Test-Controlled Reproduction Number: Application to COVID-19 in France

Christelle Baunez (), Mickael Degoulet (), Stéphane Luchini and Patrick Pintus
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Christelle Baunez: Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, Institut Neurosciences Timone
Mickael Degoulet: Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, Institut Neurosciences Timone

No 2045, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: We show that the acceleration index, a novel indicator that measures acceleration and deceleration of viral spread (Baunez et al. 2020a,b), is essentially a test-controlled version of the reproduction number. As such it is a more accurate indicator to track the dynamics of an infectious disease outbreak in real time. We indicate a discrepancy between the acceleration index and the reproduction number, based on the infectivity and test rates and we provide a formal decomposition of this difference. When applied to French data for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our decomposition shows that the reproduction number consistently underestimates the resurgence of the pandemic since the summer of 2020, compared to the acceleration index which accounts for the time-varying volume of tests. Because the acceleration index aggregates all the relevant information and captures in real time the sizeable time variation featured by viral circulation, it is a sufficient statistic to track the pandemic’s propagation.

Keywords: COVID-19; reproduction number; lock-down; acceleration index; real-time analysis; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: The Acceleration Index as a Test-Controlled Reproduction Number: Application to COVID-19 in France (2020)
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