Publications by authors named "Natalie Linton"

Article Synopsis
  • Epidemiological delays are crucial for shaping public health policies and informing clinical practices, often used in models to develop control strategies.
  • Recent findings indicate that common errors in estimating these delays, such as censoring and dynamical bias, can significantly impact various applications.
  • The text presents best practices and a flowchart to help practitioners better estimate and report these delays, particularly focusing on the incubation period and serial interval, which are vital for managing outbreaks.
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Understanding changes in the transmission dynamics of mpox requires comparing recent estimates of key epidemiologic parameters with historical data. We derived historical estimates for the incubation period and serial interval for mpox and contrasted them with pooled estimates from the 2022 outbreak. Our findings show the pooled mean infection-to-onset incubation period was 8.

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Introduction of African swine fever (ASF) to China in mid-2018 and the subsequent transboundary spread across Asia devastated regional swine production, affecting live pig and pork product-related markets worldwide. To explore the spatiotemporal spread of ASF in China, we reconstructed possible ASF transmission networks using nearest neighbour, exponential function, equal probability, and spatiotemporal case-distribution algorithms. From these networks, we estimated the reproduction numbers, serial intervals, and transmission distances of the outbreak.

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Severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections have been associated with substantial presymptomatic transmission, which occurs when the generation interval-the time between infection of an individual with a pathogen and transmission of the pathogen to another individual-is shorter than the incubation period-the time between infection and symptom onset. We collected a dataset of 257 SARS-CoV-2 transmission pairs in Japan during 2020 and jointly estimated the mean incubation period of infectors (4.8 days, 95 % CrI: 4.

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An unprecedented surge of COVID-19 cases in Taiwan in May 2021 led the government to implement strict nationwide control measures beginning May 15. During the surge, the government was able to bring the epidemic under control without a complete lockdown despite the cumulative case count reaching >14,400 and >780 deaths. We investigated the effectiveness of the public health and social measures instituted by the Taiwan government by quantifying the change in the effective reproduction number, which is a summary measure of the ability of the pathogen to spread through the population.

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Article Synopsis
  • Japan's public health measures against COVID-19 relied on voluntary social contact reduction, which raised questions about their effectiveness, especially with the more transmissible Alpha variant.
  • During the fourth wave of COVID-19 from March to June 2021, researchers examined the impact of pre-emergency measures and a state of emergency on the virus's reproduction rate.
  • The findings showed that while the state of emergency decreased the reproduction rate significantly, no individual intervention was solely responsible for reducing it below 1, emphasizing the need for stronger measures to address highly transmissible variants.
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Forecasting future epidemics helps inform policy decisions regarding interventions. During the early coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic period in January-February 2020, limited information was available, and it was too challenging to build detailed mechanistic models reflecting population behavior. This study compared the performance of phenomenological and mechanistic models for forecasting epidemics.

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Background: Following an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, passengers and crew were followed-up to determine prognosis. This study examined the epidemiological determinants of COVID-19 natural history using these follow-up data.

Methods: Infection status, diagnosis, clinical symptoms and prognosis were analysed for all passengers and crew members on the Diamond Princess.

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The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games represent the most diverse international mass gathering event held since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Postponed to summer 2021, the rescheduled Games were set to be held amidst what would become the highest-ever levels of COVID-19 transmission in the host city of Tokyo. At the same time, the Delta variant of concern was gaining traction as the dominant viral strain and Japan had yet to exceed fifteen percent of its population fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

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Following the first report of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Sapporo city, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, on 14 February 2020, a surge of cases was observed in Hokkaido during February and March. As of 6 March, 90 cases were diagnosed in Hokkaido. Unfortunately, many infected persons may not have been recognized due to having mild or no symptoms during the initial months of the outbreak.

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Objectives: End-of-outbreak declarations are an important component of outbreak response because they indicate that public health and social interventions may be relaxed or lapsed. Our study aimed to assess end-of-outbreak probabilities for clusters of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases detected during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

Methods: A statistical model for end-of-outbreak determination, which accounted for reporting delays for new cases, was computed.

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When a novel infectious disease emerges, enhanced contact tracing and isolation are implemented to prevent a major epidemic, and indeed, they have been successful for the control of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which have been greatly reduced without causing a global pandemic. Considering that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections are substantial for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the feasibility of preventing the major epidemic has been questioned. Using a two-type branching process model, the present study assesses the feasibility of containing COVID-19 by computing the probability of a major epidemic.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to estimate the serial interval of COVID-19 using data from 28 pairs of infectors and infectees, focusing on the time between when the infector becomes ill and when the infectee becomes ill.
  • - Researchers collected illness onset data, ranked it based on credibility, and adjusted for the ongoing nature of the epidemic in their analysis, ultimately estimating the median serial interval to be 4.0 days for all pairs and 4.6 days for the most credible pairs.
  • - The findings suggest that COVID-19 has a serial interval that is similar to or shorter than its incubation period, indicating that secondary transmission may happen before symptoms appear; this also means previous estimates based on the SARS serial interval could
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Article Synopsis
  • A novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan through virological tests, but non-virological data could have indicated its presence earlier.
  • By analyzing characteristics from medical social media, researchers compared the outbreak to known pathogens and assessed the likelihood that it was caused by an unknown pathogen (referred to as "Disease X").
  • On December 31, 2019, the probability that Disease X was responsible was over 29%, increasing to over 49% after specific pathogens were ruled out, highlighting the potential of using non-virological data for early risk assessments.
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The impact of the drastic reduction in travel volume within mainland China in January and February 2020 was quantified with respect to reports of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections outside China. Data on confirmed cases diagnosed outside China were analyzed using statistical models to estimate the impact of travel reduction on three epidemiological outcome measures: (i) the number of exported cases, (ii) the probability of a major epidemic, and (iii) the time delay to a major epidemic. From 28 January to 7 February 2020, we estimated that 226 exported cases (95% confidence interval: 86,449) were prevented, corresponding to a 70.

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To understand the severity of infection for a given disease, it is common epidemiological practice to estimate the case fatality risk, defined as the risk of death among cases. However, there are three technical obstacles that should be addressed to appropriately measure this risk. First, division of the cumulative number of deaths by that of cases tends to underestimate the actual risk because deaths that will occur have not yet observed, and so the delay in time from illness onset to death must be addressed.

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The geographic spread of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections from the epicenter of Wuhan, China, has provided an opportunity to study the natural history of the recently emerged virus. Using publicly available event-date data from the ongoing epidemic, the present study investigated the incubation period and other time intervals that govern the epidemiological dynamics of COVID-19 infections. Our results show that the incubation period falls within the range of 2-14 days with 95% confidence and has a mean of around 5 days when approximated using the best-fit lognormal distribution.

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The exported cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were confirmed outside China provide an opportunity to estimate the cumulative incidence and confirmed case fatality risk (cCFR) in mainland China. Knowledge of the cCFR is critical to characterize the severity and understand the pandemic potential of COVID-19 in the early stage of the epidemic. Using the exponential growth rate of the incidence, the present study statistically estimated the cCFR and the basic reproduction number-the average number of secondary cases generated by a single primary case in a naïve population.

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Reanalysis of the epidemic curve from the initial cluster of cases with novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in December 2019 indicates substantial human-to-human transmission. It is possible that the common exposure history at a seafood market in Wuhan originated from the human-to-human transmission events within the market, and the early, strong emphasis that market exposure indicated animal-to-human transmission was potentially the result of observer bias. To support the hypothesis of zoonotic origin of 2019-nCoV stemming from the Huanan seafood market, the index case should have had exposure history related to the market and the virus should have been identified from animals sold at the market.

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From 29 to 31 January 2020, a total of 565 Japanese citizens were evacuated from Wuhan, China on three chartered flights. All passengers were screened upon arrival in Japan for symptoms consistent with novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection and tested for presence of the virus. Assuming that the mean detection window of the virus can be informed by the mean serial interval (estimated at 7.

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A cluster of pneumonia cases linked to a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was reported by China in late December 2019. Reported case incidence has now reached the hundreds, but this is likely an underestimate. As of 24 January 2020, with reports of thirteen exportation events, we estimate the cumulative incidence in China at 5502 cases (95% confidence interval: 3027, 9057).

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Objective: To estimate the time-dependent measles effective reproduction number (R) as an indicator of the impact of three outbreak response vaccination (ORV) campaigns on measles transmission during a nationwide outbreak in Guinea.

Methods: R represents the average number of secondary cases generated by a single primary case in a partially immune population during a given time period. Measles R was estimated using daily incidence data for 3952 outbreak-associated measles cases in Guinea in 2017 for the time periods prior to, between, and following each of three ORV campaigns using a simple and extensible mathematical model.

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Cause of death among refugees resettled in the United States is not well documented. This evaluation determined cause of death among refugees who resettled to and died in Washington State. Records of refugees who arrived in Washington State from 2006 to 2016 were linked to state death records for the same period.

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Article Synopsis
  • By January 2017, DOH and CDC confirmed 10 cases of AFM among Washington residents from September to November 2016, after testing various specimens for potential pathogens.
  • Investigations found no common cause or exposure among the cases, but some patients tested positive for enteroviruses, indicating the need for ongoing vigilance and reporting of AFM cases by clinicians.
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