Infectivity
In epidemiology, infectivity is the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. More specifically, infectivity is a pathogen's capacity for horizontal transmission that is, how frequently it spreads among hosts that are not in a parent-child relationship. The measure of infectivity in a population is called incidence.
Infectivity has been shown to positively correlate with virulence. This means that as a pathogen's ability to infect a greater number of hosts increases, so does the level of harm it brings to the host.[1]
A pathogen's infectivity is subtly but importantly different from its transmissibility, which refers to a pathogen's capacity to pass from parent to child.
See also
- Basic reproduction number (basic reproductive rate, basic reproductive ratio, R0, or r nought)
References
- Stewart, AD; Logsdon, JM; Kelley, SE (April 2005). "An empirical study of the evolution of virulence under both horizontal and vertical transmission". Evolution. 59 (4): 730–739. doi:10.1554/03-330. PMID 15926685.
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