The authors suggest using elasticity, which has its origin in physics but was quickly adopted by economics, as a tool for identifying pandemic remission points. They particularly commented that remission will take place from the very moment in which the rate, measured through speed, of new cases is lower than the average speed of accumulated cases up to that time. According to the authors, this provides estimation in the face of possible remission variations with stability and strength, and added that “this descriptive measure, which is very easy to calculate and interpret, proves to be informative and adequate and counts on the advantage of being of free distribution, and can be estimated in real time while the data are being collected”. The epidemic of the Ebola virus in West Africa during the 2014-2016 period worked as an example for this new approach, apart from other examples that analyse COVID-19 data that have been included.

The authors recall that proper identification of pandemic remission is important since that is the moment at which a gradual relaxation of the strict control measures taken by health authorities can begin safely and “just like the current COVID-19 pandemic is showing, this can affect a country’s social and economic welfare”.

The importance of correct identification of changes

The correct identification of points of change during the research of contagious diseases outbreaks is an important issue in epidemiology, with major implications for the management of health resources, public health and, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, for social and economic welfare. Beginnings, peaks and turning points are not the only relevant points of change: so is the proper identification of remission points, as the research indicates.

Hence, researchers have worked in order to reinterpret the mathematical meaning of the concept of elasticity as an indicator of the speed of accumulation of the contagious disease’s new cases. The advantage of this model is that it can even be estimated in real time, whereas the data are being collected. These advantages, due to the simplicity of the elasticity formulation, are essential for their use in cases of epidemiological outbreak because it provides fast and reliable information which can be extremely useful for decision-makers. According to the authors, “after interpreting the elasticity concept of a random variable in an innovative way, we suggest its use as a new and simpler tool to foresee the epidemic remission points of change”.

The research has been funded by the Supera Covid-19 Fund of CRUE-CSIC-Banco Santander with the support of the Ministry of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society, and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

Article:

Ernesto J. Veres-Ferrer, Jose M. Pavía (2020): “Elasticity as a measure for online determination of remission points in ongoing epidemics”. Statistics in Medicine. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sim.8807