A generalized-growth model to characterize the early ascending phase of infectious disease outbreaks

Highlights • We introduce a generalized-growth model to characterize epidemic growth.• The generalized-growth model capture sub-exponential and exponential epidemic growth.• We uncovered epidemic profiles from data ranging from very slow growth to near exponential growth.• Our findings reveal significant variation in epidemic growth patterns across outbreaks.• Findings indicate that sub-exponential growth dynamics is a common phenomenon.