A quantitative compendium of COVID-19 epidemiology

Abstract

Accurate numbers are needed to understand and predict viral dynamics. Curation of high-quality literature values for the infectious period duration or household secondary attack rate, for example, is especially pressing currently because these numbers inform decisions about how and when to lockdown or reopen societies. We aim to provide a curated source for the key numbers that help us understand the virus driving our current global crisis. This compendium focuses solely on COVID-19 epidemiology. The numbers reported in summary format are substantiated by annotated references. For each property, we provide a concise definition, description of measurement and inference methods, and associated caveats. We hope this compendium will make essential numbers more accessible and avoid common sources of confusion for the many newcomers to the field such as using the incubation period to denote and quantify the latent period or using the hospitalization duration for the infectiousness period duration. This document will be repeatedly updated and the community is invited to participate in improving it.