In
epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.
It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evide ...
, the attack rate is the proportion of an at-risk population that contracts the disease during a specified time interval. It is used in hypothetical predictions and during actual
outbreaks
In epidemiology, an outbreak is a sudden increase in occurrences of a disease when cases are in excess of normal expectancy for the location or season. It may affect a small and localized group or impact upon thousands of people across an entire ...
of disease. An at-risk population is defined as one that has no immunity to the attacking pathogen which can be either a
novel pathogen
An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased recently (in the past 20 years), and could increase in the near future. The minority that are capable of developing efficient transmission between human ...
or an established pathogen. It is used to project the number of infections to expect during an
epidemic
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time.
Epidemics of infectious ...
. This aids in marshalling resources for delivery of medical care as well as production of vaccines and/or anti-viral and anti-bacterial medicines.
[Anthony N. Glaser. High-Yield Biostatistics. Williams & Wilkins. Baltimore. 1995] The rate is arrived at by taking the number of new cases in the population at risk and dividing by the number of persons at risk in the population.
See also
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Incidence (epidemiology)
In epidemiology, incidence is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time per ...
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Compartmental models in epidemiology
Compartmental models are a very general modelling technique. They are often applied to the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases. The population is assigned to compartments with labels – for example, S, I, or R, (Susceptible, Infectious ...
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Herd immunity
Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or mass immunity) is a form of indirect protection that applies only to contagious diseases. It occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has become im ...
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Risk assessment in public health
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Vaccine-naive
References
External links
The International Biometric SocietyThe Collection of Biostatistics Research ArchiveGuide to Biostatistics (MedPageToday.com)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Attack Rate
Epidemiology
Medical statistics
Statistical ratios
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Bioinformatics