Statistics Department Seminar

Estimating the time varying fatality rate of an emerging epidemic: An application to SARS outbreak in Hong Kong

Speaker: Dr Paul Yip
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
The University of Hong Kong

Time: 1:00p.m. Friday 30th July 2004

Venue: Red Centre Room RC-4082
near Barker Street Gate 14

Abstract:

A kernel type estimator via counting process is proposed to estimate the
time varying fatality rate of an emerging epidemic over the course of the
epidmeic. It overcomes some of the difficulties of the World Health Organization
(WHO) adopted rate which is the ratio of the cumulative number of death to
cumulative number of number cases. The WHO estimate is insensitive to the
changing nature of the epidemic and is not able to reflect the
fatality rate in a timely manner.