Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Australia

Although case numbers can describe the general dynamics of an epidemic, they have limited capacity to determine behavioural characteristics of disease transmission. Such insights are critical for enabling health authorities to better predict and respond to future epidemics. An optimal probabilistic linkage approach was applied to 18 383 Australian Delta-variant SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences and 112 551 confirmed Delta case reports. The resulting inferred transmission networks allowed quantificati