Statistics Seminar
June 2 (Tuesday) 2020, 3:00～4:00pm (Beijing Time)
ZOOM Conference ID：647 0485 9493 [Passcode: 948768]
Estimating COVID-19 susceptibility and infectivity of children using data from the city of Bnei-Brak
Dr Yair Goldberg
Associate Professor
Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Abstract:
One of the most significant unanswered questions about COVID-19 epidemiology relates to the role of children in transmission. We estimate the susceptibility and infectivity of children compared to that of adults. We used data on 613 households in the city of Bnei-Brak, Israel, in which all family members were tested using PCR for COVID-19. We developed a novel estimation method based on a discrete stochastic dynamic model of the spread of the epidemic within a household. The model describes the propagation of the disease between household members allowing for susceptibility and infectivity parameters to vary among two age groups. The parameter estimates are obtained by a maximum likelihood method, where the likelihood function is constructed based on the stochastic model via simulations.