Evaluating new evidence in the early dynamics of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China with real time domestic traffic and potential asymptomatic transmissions

  1. Can Zhou

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Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019, has spread to 28 countries/regions with over 43,000 confirmed cases. Much about this outbreak is still unknown. At this early stage of the epidemic, it is important to investigate alternative sources of information to understand its dynamics and spread. With updated real time domestic traffic, this study aims to integrate recent evidence of international evacuees extracted from Wuhan between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2, 2020 to infer the dynamics of the COVD-19 outbreak in Wuhan. In addition, a modified SEIR model was used to evaluate the empirical support for the presence of asymptomatic transmissions. Based on the data examined, this study found little evidence for the presence of asymptomatic transmissions. However, it is still too early to rule out its presence conclusively due to sample size and other limitations. The updated basic reproductive number was found to be 2.12 on average with a 95% credible interval of [2.04, 2.18]. It is smaller than previous estimates probably because the new estimate factors in the social and non-pharmaceutical mitigation implemented in Wuhan through the evacuee dataset. Detailed predictions of infected individuals exported both domestically and internationally were produced. The estimated case confirmation rate has been low but has increased steadily to 23.37% on average. The findings of this study depend on the validity of the underlying assumptions, and continuing work is needed, especially in monitoring the current infection status of Wuhan residents.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.15.20023440: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Python packages numpy and pymc3 were used to estimate model parameters, and all the data processing was conducted in Python 3.7 (Rossum, 1995) and statistical program R 3.6 (R Development Core Team, 2016).
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)
    R Development Core
    suggested: (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905)

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

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    At this stage, our understanding of the dynamics of COVD-19 is still limited due to the relatively low case confirmation, a lack of comprehensive monitoring programs and other limitations. It is thus important to consider alternative information to update our understanding about the outbreak. This study integrates the recent infection data on the early dynamics of the COVD-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China with updated real time domestic traffic data. Little empirical evidence was found supporting the presence of asymptomatic transmission. However, it is still too early to rule out its presence conclusively due to the relatively low sample size and the validity of the assumptions used in this study. The updated basic reproductive number was found to be 2.12 on average, which is significantly smaller than previous estimates (Read et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020), probably because the new estimate factors in the social and non-pharmaceutical mitigation implemented in Wuhan through the evacuee dataset. The real time traffic is a crucial piece of information to understand the dynamics and the spread of the COVD-19 outbreak in Wuhan. As a major traffic hub in central China, Wuhan’s capacity to drive significant population flows is driving the accelerated spread of the disease domestically. Real time traffic flow out of Wuhan was found to differ significantly from its historical patterns. From Jan. 1, 2020, when the Huanan seafood market was disinfected, to Jan. 23, 2020...

    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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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.02.15.20023440v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.02.15.20023440v1 on medRxiv