'Early warning signals' differ between waves of COVID-19

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-12-08 11:01

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Being able to identify rapid increases in COVID-19 cases before they occur is important in planning for outbreaks, both for governments and individuals, and early warning signals (EWS) appear able to perform that pre-emptive role with ‘warnings’ being detected consistently before the second wave of cases worldwide, according to UK scientists. However, these signals performed less well for first and third waves, they say, likely due to the virus’ initial infectivity and the brief time between second and third waves. EWSs can be improved if the analysis is restarted whenever case numbers stabilise, they add.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Early warning signal reliability varies with COVID-19 waves

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown, being able to identify rapid increases in cases before they occur is important in informing our behaviour, be that through personal choices or government actions. Early warning signals (EWSs) appear able to perform that pre-emptive role with ‘warnings’ being detected consistently before the second wave of cases worldwide. However, these signals perform less well for first and third waves, likely due to the virus’ initial infectivity and the brief time between second and third waves. Regardless, EWSs’ ability can be improved if we restart the analysis whenever the system returns to stability.

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Journal/
conference: Biology Letters

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Bristol, UK

Funder: This project was funded by a NERC GW4 + FRESH CDT PhD studentship awarded to D.O.B. (grant no. NE/R011524/1).

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