Cluster analysis of epidemiological characteristic features of confirmed cases with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outside China: a descriptive study
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Abstract
Background
Novel coronavirus COVID-19 has caused significant global outbreaks outside China. Many countries have closed their borders with China and performed obligate protective procedures, however, this disease was still rising worldwide. In this report, we aim to identify transmission patterns from China to other countries, along with describing the disease control situation of countries.
Methods
We retrospectively collected information about infected cases with COVID-19 from WHO situation reports, official notification websites of health ministries and reliable local newspapers from each country. Descriptive and cluster analysis was performed to describe the transmission characteristics while the logistic regression test was used to estimate the risk factors for the occurrence of an infected individual with an unknown source.
Results
A total of 446 infected cases were recorded from 24 countries outside China until 12 February 2020, with the number of reported infected cases were doubled every 3.08 ± 0.35 days (range from 2.6 to 3.9). Besides the spread from China, the transmission was originated from sub-endemic countries (Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, France, German). Out of 6 countries got occurrence of an infected individual with unknown source and possible potential factors contributed to this occurrence was a time of epidemic circulating, number of patients and number of clusters when the occurrence still has not happened, and notably, the unreported situation of Chinese tourists’ information.
Conclusions
The situational reports of each country about COVID-19 should be more detailed mentioning the transmissions routes with keeping contact tracing of the unknown cases to increase the control of this disease.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.28.20142000: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:While providing more insight into how COVID-19 spread worldwide, highlighting the importance of coordination between clinicians and public health authorities at the local, state, and federal levels, as well as the need for …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.28.20142000: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:While providing more insight into how COVID-19 spread worldwide, highlighting the importance of coordination between clinicians and public health authorities at the local, state, and federal levels, as well as the need for rapid assessment of clinical information related to the care of patients with this emerging infection, it was undoubtedly that there still were several limitations to our study. Incomplete data especially expose time and incubated period of the infected cases, as most of the reports were published as news reports, Ministries of Health press releases with a short description. Furthermore, investigation hence was needed to gather more knowledge about this disease.
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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