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...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Andrés Ayala, Pablo Villalobos Dintrans, Felipe Elorrieta, Claudio Castillo, Claudio Vargas, Matilde Maddaleno
Format: article
Langue:EN
Publié: MDPI AG 2021
Sujets:
R
Accès en ligne:https://doaj.org/article/b6f90bfb4a3541f58a4bfe22182ccc1e
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
Description
Résumé: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.