Estimation of MERS-Coronavirus Reproductive Number and Case Fatality Rate for the Spring 2014 Saudi Arabia Outbreak: Insights from Publicly Available Data

Discussion Understanding the epidemiological attributes of a novel, emerging infectious disease allows clinicians and public health practitioners to implement efficient, effective disease control interventions that reduce the size and impact of an outbreak or epidemic. However, rapid study of an infectious disease is always difficult, and even more so in an environment where geographic, jurisdictional, informational or political factors make population-based research challenging. While the occurrence of MERS-CoV infection in humans has now apparently been occurring for over two years, high-quality epidemiological analyses from countries with the greatest burden of MERS-CoV cases are still in short supply. Although local acquisition of MERS-CoV has occurred overwhelmingly on the Arabian Peninsula, this disease is a global public health concern and it is important for clinicians and public health practitioners both inside and outside the most-impacted regions to have sufficient information for formulation of good preventive practices. In the absence of detailed official data sources from health authorities in affected countries, we used publically available data to estimate two key epidemiological parameters that are critical to the formulation of good public health policy: the basic reproduction number (R0) of the disease and its case-fatality rate (CFR), under outbreak conditions. These parameters define both the gravity of a disease, as well as its potential for ongoing tran...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research