Related papers: Variable pool testing for infection spread estimat…

The accurate estimation of time-varying transmission rates is fundamental for understanding infectious disease dynamics and implementing effective public health interventions. To this end, we propose an improved inverse method for…

System modeling is a classical approach to ensure their reliability since it is suitable both for a formal verification and for software testing techniques. In the context of model-based testing an approach combining random testing and…

In this paper, we consider the problem of designing optimal pooling matrix for group testing (for example, for COVID-19 virus testing) with the constraint that no more than $r>0$ samples can be pooled together, which we call "dilution…

Group testing enables to identify infected individuals in a population using a smaller number of tests than individual testing. To achieve this, group testing algorithms commonly assume knowledge of the number of infected individuals;…

The time varying effective reproduction number is an important parameter for communication and policy decisions during an epidemic. In this paper, we present new statistical methods for estimating the reproduction number based on the…

We propose, implement, and evaluate a method to estimate the daily number of new symptomatic COVID-19 infections, at the level of individual U.S. counties, by deconvolving daily reported COVID-19 case counts using an estimated…

Testing individuals for pathogens can affect the spread of epidemics. Understanding how individual-level processes of sampling and reporting test results can affect community- or population-level spread is a dynamical modeling question. The…

Having accurate and timely data on confirmed active COVID-19 cases is challenging, since it depends on testing capacity and the availability of an appropriate infrastructure to perform tests and aggregate their results. In this paper, we…

In this paper, we explore whether the infection-rate of a disease can serve as a robust monitoring variable in epidemiological surveillance algorithms. The infection-rate is dependent on population mixing patterns that do not vary…

In this paper, we provide insights on how much testing and social distancing is required to control COVID-19. To this end, we develop a compartmental model that accounts for key aspects of the disease: 1) incubation time, 2) age-dependent…

The population-wise error rate (PWER) is a type I error rate for clinical trials with multiple target populations. In such trials, a treatment is tested for its efficacy in each population. The PWER is defined as the probability that a…

Group testing, a method that screens subjects in pooled samples rather than individually, has been employed as a cost-effective strategy for chlamydia screening among Iowa residents. In efforts to deepen our understanding of chlamydia…

The screening testing is an effective tool to control the early spread of an infectious disease such as COVID-19. When the total testing capacity is limited, we aim to optimally allocate testing resources among n counties. We build a…

We study the problem usually referred to as group testing in the context of COVID-19. Given n samples collected from patients, how should we select and test mixtures of samples to maximize information and minimize the number of tests? Group…

An exact method of calculating the variance of a pooled data set is presented. Its major advantages over the many other methods are that it is simple, is easily derived and remembered, and requires no assumptions. The result can be…

We introduce a new method to efficiently approximate the number of infections resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible individuals. Our approach is based on counting the number of possible infection walks…

Suppose that we are interested in the comparison of two independent categorical variables. Suppose also that the population is divided into subpopulations or groups. Notice that the distribution of the target variable may vary across…

We consider the task of estimating a network cascade as fast as possible. The cascade is assumed to spread according to a general Susceptible-Infected process with heterogeneous transmission rates from an unknown source in the network.…

By the end of July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had infected more than seventeen million people and had spread to almost all countries worldwide. In response, many countries all over the world have used different methods to reduce the…

Group testing can help maintain a widespread testing program using fewer resources amid a pandemic. In a group testing setup, we are given n samples, one per individual. Each individual is either infected or uninfected. These samples are…