Related papers: On the relative role of different age groups durin…
Background: While RSV circulation results in high burden of hospitalization, particularly among infants, young children and the elderly, little is known about the role of different age groups in propagating annual RSV epidemics in the…
Background: There is uncertainty about the role of different age groups in propagating the SARS-CoV-2 epidemics in different countries. Methods: We used the Koch Institute data on COVID-19 cases in Germany. To minimize the effect of changes…
Background: There is uncertainty about the burden of severe outcomes associated with RSV and influenza in children. Methods: We have applied previously developed methodology to estimate the rates of influenza and RSV-associated…
In this work we describe a non-parametric disease model that links the temporal change of the prevalence of an infectious disease to the incidence and the recovery rates. The model is only based on the common epidemiological measures…
Background: Globally, influenza is a major cause of morbidity, hospitalization and mortality. Influenza vaccination has shown substantial protective effectiveness in the United States. We investigated state-level patterns of coverage rates…
Finding optimal policies to reduce the morbidity and mortality of the ongoing pandemic is a top public health priority. Using a compartmental model with age structure and vaccination status, we examined the effect of age specific scheduling…
Superspreading complicates the study of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. I propose a model for aggregated case data that accounts for superspreading and improves statistical inference. In a Bayesian framework, the model is estimated on German data…
Confirmed cases during the early stage of the 2009 H1N1 pdm in various countries showed an age shift between importations and local transmission cases, with adults mainly responsible for seeding unaffected regions and children most…
On 11 June the World Health Organization officially raised the phase of pandemic alert (with regard to the new H1N1 influenza strain) to level 6. We use a global structured metapopulation model integrating mobility and transportation data…
Knowledge of the severity of an influenza outbreak is crucial for informing and monitoring appropriate public health responses, both during and after an epidemic. However, case-fatality, case-intensive care admission and…
Vaccines are the most powerful pharmaceutical tool to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. While the majority (about 65%) of the German population were fully vaccinated, incidence started growing exponentially in October 2021 with about 41% of…
A MCMC approach is used to estimate the age-specific mortality rate ratio for German men and women with RA. For constructing priors, we calculate a range of admissible values from prevalence and incidence data based on about 60 million…
Understanding age-group dynamics of infectious diseases is a fundamental issue for both scientific study and policymaking. Age-structure epidemic models were developed in order to study and improve our understanding of these dynamics. By…
During its first two years, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic manifested as multiple waves shaped by complex interactions between variants of concern, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and the immunological landscape of the population. Understanding…
Influenza remains a significant burden on health systems. Effective responses rely on the timely understanding of the magnitude and the evolution of an outbreak. For monitoring purposes, data on severe cases of influenza in England are…
For nearly a century, the initial reproduction number (R0) has been used as a one number summary to compare outbreaks of infectious disease, yet there is no `standard' estimator for R0. Difficulties in estimating R0 arise both from how a…
Background: There is limited information on the volume of influenza-associated mortality in Russia. Methods: Using previously developed methodology (Goldstein et al., Epidemiology 2012), we regressed the monthly rates of mortality for…
Background: Information on influenza-associated mortality in Russia is limited. Methods: Using previously developed methodology (Goldstein et al., Epidemiology 2012), we regressed the monthly rates of mortality for respiratory causes, as…
We develop a multiple compartment Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model to analyze the spread of several infectious diseases through different geographic areas. Additionally, we propose a data-quality sensitive optimization framework…
Progress of the COVID-19 pandemic was quantified, in the first instance, using the daily number of positive cases recorded by the national public health authorities. Averaged over a seven-day window, the daily incidence of COVID-19 in…