The correlation between infectivity and incubation period of measles, estimated from households with two cases

The generation time of an infectious disease is the time between infection of a primary case and infection of a secondary case by the primary case. Its distribution plays a key role in understanding the dynamics of infectious diseases in populations, e.g. in estimating the basic reproduction number. Moreover, the generation time and incubation period distributions together characterize the effectiveness of control by isolation and quarantine. In modelling studies, a relation between the two is often not made specific, but a correlation is biologically plausible. However, it is difficult to establish such correlation, because of the unobservable nature of infection events. We have quantified a joint distribution of generation time and incubation period by a novel estimation method for household data with two susceptible individuals, consisting of time intervals between disease onsets of two measles cases. We used two such datasets, and a separate incubation period dataset. Results indicate that the mean incubation period and the generation time of measles are positively correlated, and that both lie in the range of 11–12 days, suggesting that infectiousness of measles cases increases significantly around the time of symptom onset. The correlation between times from infection to secondary transmission and to symptom onset could critically affect the predicted effectiveness of isolation and quarantine.

► Household measles data of time intervals between symptom onset of two cases were analyzed.
► Correlation between incubation time and generation time were explicitly modelled.
► Measles incubation time and generation time appear positively correlated.
► The positive correlation could affect the effectiveness of case isolation and quarantine.