The epidemiologic parameters for COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Izadi, N.; Taherpour, N.; Mokhayeri, Y.; Sotoodeh Ghorbani, S.; Rahmani, K.; Hashemi Nazari, S. S.

Introduction: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency and international concern and recognized it as a pandemic. The aim of this study was to estimate the epidemiologic parameters of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic for clinical and epidemiological help. Methods: Four electronic databases including Web of Science, Medline (PubMed), Scopus and Google Scholar were searched for literature published from early December 2019 up to 23 March 2020. The "metan" command was used to perform a fixed or random effects analysis. Cumulative meta-analysis was performed using the "metacum" command. Results: Totally 76 observational studies were included in the analysis. The pooled estimate for R0 was 2.99 (95% CI: 2.71-3.27) for COVID-19. The overall R0 was 3.23, 1.19, 3.6 and 2.35 for China, Singapore, Iran and Japan, respectively. The overall Serial Interval, doubling time, incubation period were 4.45, 4.14 and 4.24 days for COVID-19. In addition, the overall estimation for growth rate and case fatality rate for COVID-19 were 0.38% and 3.29%, respectively. Conclusion: Calculating the pooled estimate of the epidemiological parameters of COVID-19 as an emerging disease, could reveal epidemiological features of the disease that consequently pave the way for health policy makers to think more about control strategies. Keywords: Epidemiologic Parameters; R0; Serial Interval; Doubling Time; Case Fatality Rate;COVID-19