Correcting the reproduction number for time-varying tests: A proposal and an application to COVID-19 in France

Christelle Baunez, Mickaël Degoulet, Stéphane Luchini (), Matteo Pintus, Patrick Pintus and Miriam Teschl
Additional contact information
Christelle Baunez: INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Mickaël Degoulet: INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Stéphane Luchini: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Matteo Pintus: AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay
Miriam Teschl: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We provide a novel way to correct the effective reproduction number for the time-varying amount of tests, using the acceleration index (Baunez et al., 2021) as a simple measure of viral spread dynamics. Not correcting results in the reproduction number being a biased estimate of viral acceleration and we provide a formal decomposition of the resulting bias, involving the useful notions of test and infectivity intensities. When applied to French data for the COVID-19 pandemic (May 13, 2020-October 26, 2022), our decomposition shows that the reproduction number, when considered alone, characteristically underestimates the resurgence of the pandemic, compared to the acceleration index which accounts for the time-varying volume of tests. Because the acceleration index aggregates all relevant information and captures in real time the sizable time variation featured by viral circulation, it is a more parsimonious indicator to track the dynamics of an infectious disease outbreak in real time, compared to the equivalent alternative which would combine the reproduction number with the test and infectivity intensities.

Keywords: Virus testing; Pandemics; COVID 19; Public and occupational health; France; Acceleration; Diagnostic medicine; Public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-hea
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-04171870v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in PLoS ONE, 2023, 18, ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0281943⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://amu.hal.science/hal-04171870v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Correcting the Reproduction Number for Time-Varying Tests: a Proposal and an Application to COVID-19 in France (2023)
Working Paper: Correcting the Reproduction Number for Time-Varying Tests: a Proposal and an Application to COVID-19 in France (2022)
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:hal:journl:hal-04171870

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281943

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().