Assessing the Impact of Reduced Travel on Exportation Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Infection (COVID-19)
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Abstract
The impact of the drastic reduction in travel volume within mainland China in January and February 2020 was quantified with respect to reports of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections outside China. Data on confirmed cases diagnosed outside China were analyzed using statistical models to estimate the impact of travel reduction on three epidemiological outcome measures: (i) the number of exported cases, (ii) the probability of a major epidemic, and (iii) the time delay to a major epidemic. From 28 January to 7 February 2020, we estimated that 226 exported cases (95% confidence interval: 86,449) were prevented, corresponding to a 70.4% reduction in incidence compared to the counterfactual scenario. The reduced probability of a major epidemic ranged from 7% to 20% in Japan, which resulted in a median time delay to a major epidemic of two days. Depending on the scenario, the estimated delay may be less than one day. As the delay is small, the decision to control travel volume through restrictions on freedom of movement should be balanced between the resulting estimated epidemiological impact and predicted economic fallout.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.14.20022897: (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:Limitations of the present study must be discussed. First, the present study relied on the volume of cases diagnosed outside China and did not directly examine human migration data. Second, we were unable to classify exported …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.14.20022897: (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:Limitations of the present study must be discussed. First, the present study relied on the volume of cases diagnosed outside China and did not directly examine human migration data. Second, we were unable to classify exported cases into those who acquired infection in Hubei versus elsewhere in China. Having this information may offer additional insight. Third, several rough assumptions (e.g., a fixed time delay from illness onset to reporting at 5 days) were imposed, and the results presented here should be regarded as a preliminary assessment. In conclusion, the present study explored the impact of reduced travel volume to and from China on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 outside China, estimating that the time delay to a major epidemic was on the order of 2 days by 7 February 2020 for Japan. Our proposed approach was kept simple and will be applicable to other emerging epidemics in the future.
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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