K number: what is the coronavirus metric that could be crucial as lockdown eases?
R is the average rate of transmission, whereas K sheds light on the variation behind R. “Some [infectious] people might generate a lot of secondary cases because of the event they attend, for example, and other people may not generate many secondary cases at all,” said Dr Adam Kucharski, an expert in the dynamics of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“K is the statistical value that tells us how much variation there is in that distribution.”

But unlike R, K numbers are not intuitive. “The general rule is that the smaller the K value is, the more transmission comes from a smaller number of infectious people,” said Kucharski.

“Once K is above about five or 10 it tells you most people are generating pretty similar numbers [of secondary cases], you are not getting these super-spreading events. Once K is below one, you have got the potential for super-spreading.”

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