ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the analysis of data from a single epidemic in a somewhat larger community. It describes an analysis based on a generalized linear model which can be applied under certain circumstances. For the purpose of introducing the generalized linear model it is convenient to formulate the assumptions about the risk of infection in terms of the individual susceptibles. The infectious period of each infected individual is taken to be the collection of days on which the individual displayed symptoms. Continuous-time removal data was first used to estimate an infection rate, and a removal rate, by Bailey and Thomas. For some diseases even one infectious individual might be enough to infect the entire ‘environment’ of the community. In the latter case one might choose thereby specifying an analogue of the Greenwood assumption which is so familiar in epidemic chain models.