Superspreading in Early Transmissions of COVID-19 in Indonesia

Hasan, A.; Susanto, H.; Kasim, M.; Nuraini, N.; Triany, D.; Lestari, B.

We estimate the basic reproduction number R0 and the overdispersion parameter K at two COVID-19 clusters in Indonesia: Jakarta-Depok and Batam. Based on the first 397 confirmed cases in both clusters, we find a high degree of individual-level variation in the transmission. The basic reproduction number R0 is estimated at 6.79 and 2.47, while the overdispersion parameter K of a negative-binomial distribution is estimated at 0.08 and 0.2 for Jakarta-Depok and Batam, respectively. This suggests that superspreading events played a key role in the early stage of the outbreak, i.e., a small number of infected individuals are responsible for large amounts of COVID-19 transmission.