Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Faculty of Mathematics, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Bull Math Biol. 2013 Jul;75(7):1031-50. doi: 10.1007/s11538-013-9836-3. Epub 2013 Apr 26.
The basic reproduction number, R₀, is probably the most important quantity in epidemiology. It is used to measure the transmission potential during the initial phase of an epidemic. In this paper, we are specifically concerned with the quantification of the spread of a disease modeled by a Markov chain. Due to the occurrence of repeated contacts taking place between a typical infective individual and other individuals already infected before, R₀ overestimates the average number of secondary infections. We present two alternative measures, namely, the exact reproduction number, Re0, and the population transmission number, Rp, that overcome this difficulty and provide valuable insight. The applicability of Re0 and Rp to control of disease spread is also examined.
基本繁殖数，R₀，可能是流行病学中最重要的数量。它用于衡量传染病在初始阶段的传播潜力。在本文中，我们特别关注由马尔可夫链建模的疾病传播的量化。由于典型感染个体与之前已感染的其他个体之间发生的重复接触，R₀高估了平均二次感染数量。我们提出了两种替代措施，即精确繁殖数 Re0 和人口传播数 Rp，它们克服了这一困难，并提供了有价值的见解。还研究了 Re0 和 Rp 对疾病传播控制的适用性。
