Statistical studies of infectious disease incidence. (English) Zbl 0913.62102

Becker, Niels G.; Britton, Tom

J. R. Stat. Soc., Ser. B, Stat. Methodol. 61, No. 2, 287-307 (1999).

Summary: Methods for the analysis of data on the incidence of an infectious disease are reviewed, with an emphasis on important objectives that such analyses should address and identifying areas where further work is required. Recent statistical work has adapted methods for constructing estimating functions from martingale theory, methods of data augmentation and methods developed for studying the human immunodeficiency virus acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic. Infectious disease data seem particularly suited to analysis by Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
Epidemic modellers have recently made substantial progress in allowing for community structure and heterogeneity among individuals when studying the requirements for preventing major epidemics. This has stimulated interest in making statistical inferences about crucial parameters from infectious disease data for such community settings.

MSC:

62P10	Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis
92D30	Epidemiology
92B15	General biostatistics

Keywords:

control of diseases; epidemic data; epidemics in structured communities; heterogeneous individuals; immunity coverage; incomplete data; infectivity function; martingale estimating function; vaccination coverage; vaccine efficacy; data augmentation