Rø Gunnar, Lyngstad Trude Marie, Seppälä Elina, Nærland Skodvin Siri, Trogstad Lill, White Richard Aubrey, Paulsen Arve, Hessevik Paulsen Trine, Skogset Ofitserova Trine, Langlete Petter, Madslien Elisabeth Henie, Nygård Karin, Freisleben de Blasio Birgitte
Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Division of Infection Control, Oslo, Norway.
Centre for Fertility and Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 30;20(1):e0317105. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0317105. eCollection 2025.
Estimating the trend of new infections was crucial for monitoring risk and for evaluating strategies and interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic revealed the utility of new data sources and highlighted challenges in interpreting surveillance indicators when changes in disease severity, testing practices or reporting occur. Our study aims to estimate the underlying trend in new COVID-19 infections by combining estimates of growth rates from all available surveillance indicators in Norway. We estimated growth rates by using a negative binomial regression method and aligned the growth rates in time to hospital admissions by maximising correlations. Using a meta-analysis framework, we calculated overall growth rates and reproduction numbers including assessments of the heterogeneity between indicators. We find that the estimated growth rates reached a maximum of 25% per day in March 2020, but afterwards they were between -10% and 10% per day. The correlations between the growth rates estimated from different indicators were between 0.5 and 1.0. Growth rates from indicators based on wastewater, panel and cohort data can give up to 14 days earlier signals of trends compared to hospital admissions, while indicators based on positive lab tests can give signals up to 7 days earlier. Combining estimates of growth rates from multiple surveillance indicators provides a useful description of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway. This is a powerful technique for a holistic understanding of the trends of new COVID-19 infections and the technique can easily be adapted to new data sources and situations.
在新冠疫情期间,估算新感染病例的趋势对于监测风险以及评估策略和干预措施至关重要。疫情揭示了新数据源的效用,并凸显了在疾病严重程度、检测方法或报告发生变化时,解读监测指标所面临的挑战。我们的研究旨在通过整合挪威所有可用监测指标的增长率估计值,来估算新冠病毒新感染病例的潜在趋势。我们使用负二项回归方法估算增长率,并通过最大化相关性将增长率在时间上与住院人数对齐。利用荟萃分析框架,我们计算了总体增长率和繁殖数,包括对指标间异质性的评估。我们发现,估计增长率在2020年3月达到每日最高25%,但此后每日在-10%至10%之间。不同指标估计的增长率之间的相关性在0.5至1.0之间。与住院人数相比,基于废水、小组和队列数据的指标的增长率能提前多达14天发出趋势信号,而基于实验室阳性检测的指标能提前多达7天发出信号。整合多个监测指标的增长率估计值,可为挪威的新冠疫情提供有用的描述。这是一种全面了解新冠病毒新感染趋势的有力技术,并且该技术可轻松适用于新的数据源和情况。