Contact intervals, survival analysis of epidemic data, and estimation of R_0

Abstract

We argue that the time from the onset of infectiousness to infectious contact, which we call the contact interval, is a better basis for inference in epidemic data than the generation or serial interval. Since contact intervals can be right-censored, survival analysis is the natural approach to estimation. Estimates of the contact interval distribution can be used to estimate R_0 in both mass-action and network-based models.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures; submitted to Biostatistic