Table 1.

Modelling terms definitions

Term	Definition
Phenomenological models	Mathematical/statistical expressions that relate different epidemic observations to each other, where the relationship seeks to best describe the data. Descriptive statistics or regression-based models are some of the examples
Mechanistic models	The nature of disease spread relationship is compartmentalised by observed biological processes that are thought to have given rise to the data. The biological possesses could be parameterised and that could be inferred independently from observational outbreak data. These models can be implemented by system-level perspective, such as ordinary differential equations (ODEs), or stochastic models or agent-based models
Homogenous mixing	Homogeneous model assumes that all hosts have identical rate of disease-causing contacts. The simple susceptible-(exposed)-infected-removed model without consideration of additional population heterogeneity are considered as homogeneous mixing in this study
Heterogeneous mixing	Heterogeneous model sub-divides population into different groups, depending upon characteristics that may influence the risk of receiving and transmitting an infection [14]. Models considering any host heterogeneities or included additional compartments (such as hospital and/or funeral) are considered as heterogeneous mixing here
Basic reproduction number	Basic reproduction number is the expected number of secondary cases generated by one infected individual over the course of their infection in a fully susceptible population [13] (i.e. before interventions are put in place or immunity develops)
Serial interval	Serial interval is defined as the time between illness onset in the primary case to illness onset in the secondary case [15]. Understanding serial interval and their moment generating function would help shaping the relationship between epidemic growth rates and reproductive numbers [16]
Latency period	Latency period is the time between infected individual to become infectious. This metric can be converted to the rate at which an exposed becomes infective as a modelling parameter for those models considering exposed stage
Infectious period	Infectious period is defined as the period that an infected person transmits disease to a susceptible person. The reciprocal of infectious period determines the removal/recovery rate for epidemic modelling
Case fatality rate	Case fatality rate is the proportion of deaths of cases over the course of the disease
Underreporting	Underreporting is interpreted as surveillance systems that fail to reflect all infection cases in a given population. Most of the modern surveillance systems are affected by a degree of underestimation of the true incidence of disease [6] due to asymptomatic cases, inability of disease recognition and detection
Compartment model	Compartment model is a type of modelling methods used for mimicking the way how a disease is transmitted among stages of a population system