Fig. 2.

Estimates of the reproduction number from the exponential growth rate based on serial and generation interval distributions. (A) The initial forward serial interval distributions give the correct link between the exponential growth rate $r$ and the reproduction number ${\mathcal{R}}_0$, for any correlation $\rho$ between intrinsic incubation period and intrinsic generation interval of the underlying bivariate log-normal distribution. (B) The intrinsic serial interval distributions give an incorrect link between $r$ and ${\mathcal{R}}_0$. (C) The mean initial forward serial interval during the exponential growth phase increases with $r$. (D) The squared coefficient of variation of the initial forward serial intervals during the exponential growth phase decreases with $r$.