Understanding the early dynamics of the 2014 porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) outbreak in Ontario using the incidence decay and exponential adjustment (IDEA) model

Greer, Amy L.; Spence, Kelsey; Gardner, Emma

In order to derive an estimate of the generation time for the outbreak (time interval between successive generations of PEDV positive farms), we utilized publically available estimates of the incubation period (approx. 2 days) and the average infectious period (approx. 10 days) [25] [26] [27] [28] . This allowed us to derive a mean generation time of seven days for PEDV based on the heuristic that the generation time (T) is the incubation period plus one half of the infectious period. However, due to the highly variable estimates for the incubation period and infectious period combined with a lack of detail regarding the potential connectivity of Ontario swine farms that would create opportunities for farm-to-farm transmission, we conducted sensitivity analyses that examined a range of possible generation times between 7 and 13 days.