“…We also used the nonoverlapping time window method to estimate the average R t for the early ascending phase for each of the COVID-19 waves. For the R t estimation, the distribution of serial interval was parametrically defined using a mean of 4.6 days and SD of 5.55 days ( Ofori et al , 2022 ;You et al , 2020 ). We report the mean and 95% credible interval (CrL).…”