Reconciling early-outbreak estimates of the basic reproductive number and its uncertainty: framework and applications to the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak

Abstract A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has recently emerged as a global threat. As the epidemic progresses, many disease modelers have focused on estimating the basic reproductive number ℛ 0 – the average number of secondary cases caused by a primary case in an otherwise susceptible population. The modeling approaches and resulting estimates of ℛ 0 vary widely, despite relying on similar data sources. Here, we present a novel statistical …