China’s effective control and other countries’ uncharted challenge against COVID-19: an epidemiological and modelling study

  1. Lingling Zheng
  2. Qin Kang
  3. Weiyao Liao
  4. Xiujuan Chen
  5. Shuai Huang
  6. Dong Liu
  7. Huimin Xia
  8. Jinling Tang
  9. Huiying Liang

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Abstract

Background

On the present trajectory, COVID is inevitably becoming a global epidemic, leading to concerns regarding the pandemic potential in China and other countries.

Objective

In this study, we use the time-dependent reproduction number (R t ) to comprise the COVID transmissibility across different countries.

Methods

We used data from Jan 20, 2019, to Feb 29, 2020, on the number of newly confirmed cases, obtained from the reports published by the CDC, to infer the incidence of infectious over time. A two-step procedure was used to estimate the R t . The first step used data on known index-secondary cases pairs, from publicly available case reports, to estimate the serial interval distribution. The second step estimated the R t jointly from the incidence data and the information data in the first step. R t was then used to simulate the epidemics across all major cities in China and typical countries worldwide.

Results

Based on a total of 126 index-secondary cases pairs from 4 international regions, we estimated that the serial interval for SARS-2-CoV was 4.18 (IQR 1.92 – 6.65) days. Domestically, R t of China, Hubei province, Wuhan had fallen below 1.0 on 9 Feb, 10 Feb and 13 Feb (R t were 0.99±0.02, 0.99±0.02 and 0.96±0.02), respectively. Internationally, as of 26 Feb, statistically significant periods of COVID spread (R t >1) were identified for most regions, except for Singapore (R t was 0.92±0.17).

Conclusions

The epidemic in China has been well controlled, but the worldwide pandemic has not been well controlled. Worldwide preparedness and vulnerability against COVID-19 should be regarded with more care.

    What is already known on this subject?

  • The basic reproduction number (R0) and the-time-dependent reproduction number (Rt) are two important indicators of infectious disease transmission. In addition, Rt as a derivative of R0 could be used to assess the epidemiological development of the disease and effectiveness of control measures. Most current researches used data from earlier periods in Wuhan and refer to the epidemiological features of SARS, which are possibly biased. Meanwhile, there are fewer studies discussed the Rt of COVID-19. Current clinical and epidemiological data are insufficient to help us understand the full view of the potential transmission of this disease.

    What this study adds?

  • We use up-to-data observation of the serial interval and cases arising from local transmission to calculate the Rt in different outbreak level area and every province in China as well as five-top sever outbreak countries and other overseas. By comparing the Rt, we discussed the situation of outbreak around the world.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.28.20083899: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.28.20083899v1 on medRxiv