for a given value of θ, and omitting the index case (i = 1) from the multiplication. Given the parameters for the generation time distribution θ, and all dates of symptom onset t, the parameters v i,j can be estimated. To estimate v i,j , the above likelihood function was evaluated in an adaptive rejection algorithm (Metropolis Hastings sampler) obtaining sets of V matrices with relative frequencies proportional to their likelihood (2) (3) (4) .