case-to-infection proportion
- noun
- Specialized
- A low case-to-infection proportion suggests that many infections are asymptomatic or unreported.
Examples
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The case-to-infection proportion helps public health officials assess the severity of an epidemic.
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Researchers compared the case-to-infection proportion between different age groups during the outbreak.
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The current case-to-infection proportion is alarming.
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Health officials reported a high case-to-infection proportion this week.
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The case-to-infection proportion helps epidemiologists understand how many infections are actually reported.
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During the study, the case-to-infection proportion was calculated to evaluate the disease's impact on the population.
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A higher case-to-infection proportion indicates more people are showing symptoms of the disease.
Synonyms
A number that shows how many infected people become sick
Surface Forms
Morphology
case-to-infection + proportion
The phrase is compositionally built from a '[case]-to-[infection]' relation plus 'proportion', so in form it denotes the proportion/ratio of cases to infections and a learner who understands 'case', 'infection' and 'proportion' can partly reconstruct this. However, 'case-to-infection' is a technical epidemiological term (distinguishing diagnosed cases from total infections) and requires domain knowledge to grasp the exact meaning, so it is not fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Case-to-infection proportion makes a simple picture: the people we see as sick (the cases) compared with everyone who has the infection, even those we cannot see (the infections). So, this ratio shows what part of all infections become counted 'cases' and helps health workers understand how serious an illness is.