IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0248731.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating the basic reproduction number for COVID-19 in Western Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Isabella Locatelli
  • Bastien Trächsel
  • Valentin Rousson

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the basic reproduction number (R0) for COVID-19 in Western Europe. Methods: Data (official statistics) on the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 at the start of the outbreak (before any confinement rules were declared) were retrieved in the 15 largest countries in Western Europe, allowing us to estimate the exponential growth rate of the disease. The rate was then combined with estimates of the distribution of the generation interval as reconstructed from the literature. Results: Despite the possible unreliability of some official statistics about COVID-19, the spread of the disease appears to be remarkably similar in most European countries, allowing us to estimate an average R0 in Western Europe of 2.2 (95% CI: 1.9–2.6). Conclusions: The value of R0 for COVID-19 in Western Europe appears to be significantly lower than that in China. The proportion of immune persons in the European population required to stop the outbreak could thus be closer to 50% than to 70%.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabella Locatelli & Bastien Trächsel & Valentin Rousson, 2021. "Estimating the basic reproduction number for COVID-19 in Western Europe," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-9, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0248731
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248731
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248731
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248731&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0248731?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Md Arif Billah & Md Mamun Miah & Md Nuruzzaman Khan, 2020. "Reproductive number of coronavirus: A systematic review and meta-analysis based on global level evidence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-17, November.
    2. Tore Schweder & Nils Lid Hjort, 2002. "Confidence and Likelihood," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 29(2), pages 309-332, June.
    3. Joe Hilton & Matt J Keeling, 2020. "Estimation of country-level basic reproductive ratios for novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) using synthetic contact matrices," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(7), pages 1-10, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Meng, Xueyu & Lin, Jianhong & Fan, Yufei & Gao, Fujuan & Fenoaltea, Enrico Maria & Cai, Zhiqiang & Si, Shubin, 2023. "Coupled disease-vaccination behavior dynamic analysis and its application in COVID-19 pandemic," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    2. Gong, Jiangyue & Gujjula, Krishna Reddy & Ntaimo, Lewis, 2023. "An integrated chance constraints approach for optimal vaccination strategies under uncertainty for COVID-19," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PA).
    3. Ida Johnsson & M. Hashem Pesaran & Cynthia Fan Yang, 2023. "Structural Econometric Estimation of the Basic Reproduction Number for Covid-19 across U.S. States and Selected Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 10659, CESifo.
    4. Richard J. Sheppard & Oliver J. Watson & Rachel Pieciak & James Lungu & Geoffrey Kwenda & Crispin Moyo & Stephen Longa Chanda & Gregory Barnsley & Nicholas F. Brazeau & Ines C. G. Gerard-Ursin & Danie, 2023. "Using mortuary and burial data to place COVID-19 in Lusaka, Zambia within a global context," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    5. Maria Czech, 2022. "The Impact of Covid-19 Dynamics on SCDS Spreads in Selected CEE Countries," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1), pages 254-271.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rachid Laajaj & Camilo De Los Rios & Ignacio Sarmiento-Barbieri & Danilo Aristizabal & Eduardo Behrentz & Raquel Berna & Giancarlo Buitrago & Zulma Cucunubá, 2021. "SARS-CoV-2 spread, detection, and dynamics in a megacity in Latin America," Documentos CEDE 19152, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    2. Yubin Lee & Byung-Woo Kim & Shin-Woo Kim & Hyunjin Son & Boyoung Park & Heeyoung Lee & Myoungsoon You & Moran Ki, 2021. "Precautionary Behavior Practices and Psychological Characteristics of COVID-19 Patients and Quarantined Persons," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-15, June.
    3. La Vecchia, Davide & Moor, Alban & Scaillet, Olivier, 2023. "A higher-order correct fast moving-average bootstrap for dependent data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(1), pages 65-81.
    4. Facundo Piguillem & Liyan Shi, 2022. "Optimal Covid-19 Quarantine and Testing Policies," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(647), pages 2534-2562.
    5. Xiaokang Luo & Tirthankar Dasgupta & Minge Xie & Regina Y. Liu, 2021. "Leveraging the Fisher randomization test using confidence distributions: Inference, combination and fusion learning," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 83(4), pages 777-797, September.
    6. Rachid Laajaj & Duncan Webb & Danilo Aristizabal & Eduardo Behrentz & Raquel Bernal & Giancarlo Buitrago & Zulma Cucunubá & Fernando de la Hoz, 2021. "Understanding how socioeconomic inequalities drive inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 infections," Documentos CEDE 19241, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    7. Nicolas Miconnet & Marie Cornu & Annie Beaufort & Laurent Rosso & Jean‐Baptiste Denis, 2005. "Uncertainty Distribution Associated with Estimating a Proportion in Microbial Risk Assessment," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(1), pages 39-48, February.
    8. Piero Veronese & Eugenio Melilli, 2021. "Confidence Distribution for the Ability Parameter of the Rasch Model," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 86(1), pages 131-166, March.
    9. Simón A. Rella & Yuliya A. Kulikova & Emmanouil T. Dermitzakis & Fyodor A. Kondrashov, 2021. "Rates of SARS-COV-2 transmission and vaccination impact the fate of vaccine-resistant strains," Working Papers 2129, Banco de España.
    10. P. Battiston & M. Menegatti, 2022. "Interaction in Prevention: A General Theory and an Application to COVID-19 Pandemic," Economics Department Working Papers 2022-EP02, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    11. Kruschke, John K. & Liddell, Torrin, 2016. "The Bayesian New Statistics: Hypothesis testing, estimation, meta-analysis, and power analysis from a Bayesian perspective," OSF Preprints ksfyr, Center for Open Science.
    12. Yang Liu & Jan Hannig, 2017. "Generalized Fiducial Inference for Logistic Graded Response Models," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1097-1125, December.
    13. Bickel David R., 2012. "Empirical Bayes Interval Estimates that are Conditionally Equal to Unadjusted Confidence Intervals or to Default Prior Credibility Intervals," Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology, De Gruyter, vol. 11(3), pages 1-34, February.
    14. Khalid A. Kheirallah & Belal Alsinglawi & Abdallah Alzoubi & Motasem N. Saidan & Omar Mubin & Mohammed S. Alorjani & Fawaz Mzayek, 2020. "The Effect of Strict State Measures on the Epidemiologic Curve of COVID-19 Infection in the Context of a Developing Country: A Simulation from Jordan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-11, September.
    15. Nancy Reid & David R. Cox, 2015. "On Some Principles of Statistical Inference," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 83(2), pages 293-308, August.
    16. Kirsten Vanderplanken & Stephan Van den Broucke & Isabelle Aujoulat & Joris Adriaan Frank van Loenhout, 2021. "The Relation between Perceived and Actual Understanding and Adherence: Results from a National Survey on COVID-19 Measures in Belgium," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-10, September.
    17. Nezakati, Ensiyeh & Pircalabelu, Eugen, 2021. "Unbalanced distributed estimation and inference for precision matrices," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2021031, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    18. Tri Nguyen-Huu & Pierre Auger & Ali Moussaoui, 2023. "On Incidence-Dependent Management Strategies against an SEIRS Epidemic: Extinction of the Epidemic Using Allee Effect," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-25, June.
    19. Xuhua Liu & Xingzhong Xu, 2016. "Confidence distribution inferences in one-way random effects model," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 25(1), pages 59-74, March.
    20. Jude Dzevela Kong & Edward W Tekwa & Sarah A Gignoux-Wolfsohn, 2021. "Social, economic, and environmental factors influencing the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 across countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0248731. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.