Identification of COVID-19 Waves: Considerations for Research and Policy

The identification of COVID-19 waves is a matter of the utmost importance, both for research and decision making. This study uses COVID-19 information from the 52 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region, Chile, and presents a quantitative method—based on weekly accumulated incidence rates—to defin...

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Autores principales: Andrés Ayala, Pablo Villalobos Dintrans, Felipe Elorrieta, Claudio Castillo, Claudio Vargas, Matilde Maddaleno
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/b6f90bfb4a3541f58a4bfe22182ccc1e
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Sumario:The identification of COVID-19 waves is a matter of the utmost importance, both for research and decision making. This study uses COVID-19 information from the 52 municipalities of the Metropolitan Region, Chile, and presents a quantitative method—based on weekly accumulated incidence rates—to define COVID-19 waves. We explore three different criteria to define the duration of a wave, and performed a sensitivity analysis using multivariate linear models to show their commonalities and differences. The results show that, compared to a benchmark definition (a 100-day wave), the estimations using longer periods of study are worse in terms of the model’s overall fit (adjusted R<sup>2</sup>). The article shows that defining a COVID-19 wave is not necessarily simple, and has consequences when performing data analysis. The results highlight the need to adopt well-defined and well-justified definitions for COVID-19 waves, since these methodological choices can have an impact in research and policy making.