Estimating internationally imported cases during the early COVID-19 pandemic

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Abstract

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, predictions of international outbreaks were largely based on imported cases from Wuhan, China, potentially missing imports from other cities. We provide a method, combining daily COVID-19 prevalence and flight passenger volume, to estimate importations from 18 Chinese cities to 43 international destinations, including 26 in Africa. Global case importations from China in early January came primarily from Wuhan, but the inferred source shifted to other cities in mid-February, especially for importations to African destinations. We estimate that 10.4 (6.2 – 27.1) COVID-19 cases were imported to these African destinations, which exhibited marked variation in their magnitude and main sources of importation. We estimate that 90% of imported cases arrived between 17 January and 7 February, prior to the first case detections. Our results highlight the dynamic role of source locations, which can help focus surveillance and response efforts.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.23.20038331: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The tools we propose here are particularly useful for locations facing significant surveillance constraints, and potential resource limitations in managing ongoing response efforts, and thereby work to address enduring gaps in infectious disease monitoring and preparedness.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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