Preliminary estimation of the basic reproduction number of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China, from 2019 to 2020: A data-driven analysis in the early phase of the outbreak

  1. Shi Zhao
  2. Qianyin Lin
  3. Jinjun Ran
  4. Salihu S Musa
  5. Guangpu Yang
  6. Weiming Wang
  7. Yijun Lou
  8. Daozhou Gao
  9. Lin Yang
  10. Daihai He
  11. Maggie H Wang
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Abstract

Backgrounds

An ongoing outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pneumonia hit a major city of China, Wuhan, December 2019 and subsequently reached other provinces/regions of China and countries. We present estimates of the basic reproduction number,R0, of 2019-nCoV in the early phase of the outbreak.

Methods

Accounting for the impact of the variations in disease reporting rate, we modelled the epidemic curve of 2019-nCoV cases time series, in mainland China from January 10 to January 24, 2020, through the exponential growth. With the estimated intrinsic growth rate (γ), we estimatedR0by using the serial intervals (SI) of two other well-known coronavirus diseases, MERS and SARS, as approximations for the true unknown SI.

Findings

The early outbreak data largely follows the exponential growth. We estimated that the meanR0ranges from 2.24 (95%CI: 1.96-2.55) to 3.58 (95%CI: 2.89-4.39) associated with 8-fold to 2-fold increase in the reporting rate. We demonstrated that changes in reporting rate substantially affect estimates ofR0.

Conclusion

The mean estimate ofR0for the 2019-nCoV ranges from 2.24 to 3.58, and significantly larger than 1. Our findings indicate the potential of 2019-nCoV to cause outbreaks.

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