Christopher Morley, PhD, is chair of public health and preventive medicine at Upstate (photo by Jim Howe)
How an epidemic's 'curve' is charted and what it means
Christopher Morley, PhD, explains how the course of an epidemic is charted. Scientists use the average number of new infections produced from each infected person, the number of days from when an individual is exposed to when he or she is infectious, and the period during which an individual is infectious to others. Together with additional information about the population and the disease's fatality rate, scientists can graph how many cases are likely to occur at what time. Morley is chair of public health and preventive medicine at Upstate.
