Infectivity

In epidemiology, infectivity is the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. More specifically, infectivity is a pathogen's capacity for horizontal transmission that is, how frequently it spreads among hosts that are not in a parent-child relationship. The measure of infectivity in a population is called incidence.

Infectivity has been shown to positively correlate with virulence. This means that as a pathogen's ability to infect a greater number of hosts increases, so does the level of harm it brings to the host.

A pathogen's infectivity is subtly but importantly different from its transmissibility, which refers to a pathogen's capacity to pass from parent to child.

References

See also

• Basic reproduction number (basic reproductive rate, basic reproductive ratio, R₀, or r nought)

External links

• Def

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