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Transmission Dynamics and Control of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Marc Lipsitch 1,Ted Cohen 1,Ben Cooper 1,James M. Robins 1,Stefan Ma 2,Lyn James 2,Gowri Gopalakrishna 2,Suok Kai Chew 2,Chorh Chuan Tan 2,Matthew H. Samore 3,David Fisman 4,Megan Murray 5*
1 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. 2 Ministry of Health, Singapore. 3 Department of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. 4 Dept. of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; City of Hamilton Public Health and Community Service Department, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 5 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Infectious Disease Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fruit Street, Boston, MA, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mmurray{at}hsph.harvard.edu.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a recently describedillness of humans that has spread widely over the past 6 months.Using detailed epidemiologic data from Singapore and the epidemiccurves from other settings, we estimated the reproductive numberfor SARS both in the absence of interventions and in the presenceof control efforts. We estimate that a single infectious caseof SARS will infect about 3 secondary cases in a populationthat has not yet instituted control measures. Public healthefforts to reduce transmission are expected to have a significantimpact on reducing the size of the epidemic.
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Steven Riley, Christophe Fraser, Christl A. Donnelly, Azra C. Ghani, Laith J. Abu-Raddad, Anthony J. Hedley, Gabriel M. Leung, Lai-Ming Ho, Tai-Hing Lam, Thuan Q. Thach, Patsy Chau, King-Pan Chan, Su-Vui Lo, Pak-Yin Leung, Thomas Tsang, William Ho, Koon-Hung Lee, Edith M. C. Lau, Neil M. Ferguson, and Roy M. Anderson (20 June 2003) Science300 (5627), 1961.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1086478] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
PERSPECTIVES
Chris Dye and Nigel Gay (20 June 2003) Science300 (5627), 1884.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1086925] |Summary »|Full Text »|PDF »
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