Evaluation of the basic reproduction number of MERS-CoV during the 2015 outbreak in South Korea

In 2015 an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) has occurred in South Korea, which has been known to be the second biggest outbreak of MERS so far. In this paper we study an estimation of the basic reproduction number of the coronavirus (CoV) of MERS based on the reported data from the MERS spread in South Korea. To this end we employ a mathematical model described by a set of ordinary differential equations, i.e. the well-known susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model. First we fit the model to the epidemic curve data obtained from the outbreak. Then we can identify the model parameters and also the basic reproduction number. Note that there had been no control intervention during the early stage of the MERS outbreak in South Korea, which can be considered as the best condition for the estimation study of intrinsic epidemic parameters of MERS, such as basic reproduction number.