Spread and control of COVID-19 in China and their associations with population movement, public health emergency measures, and medical resources

  1. Songmin Ying
  2. Fei Li
  3. Xinwei Geng
  4. Zhouyang Li
  5. Xufei Du
  6. Haixia Chen
  7. Sisi Chen
  8. Min Zhang
  9. Zhehua Shao
  10. Yinfang Wu
  11. Madiha Zahra Syeda
  12. Fugui Yan
  13. Luanqing Che
  14. Bin Zhang
  15. Jian Lou
  16. Shaobin Wang
  17. Zhengming Chen
  18. Wen Li
  19. Ye Shen
  20. Zhihua Chen
  21. Huahao Shen
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Abstract

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 epidemic, first emerged in Wuhan during December 2019, has spread globally. While the mass population movement for Chinese New Year has significantly influenced spreading the disease, little direct evidence exists about the relevance to epidemic and its control of population movement from Wuhan, local emergency response, and medical resources in China.

METHODS

Spearman’s correlation analysis was performed between official data of confirmed COVID-19 cases from Jan 20th to Feb 19th, 2020 and real-time travel data and health resources data.

RESULTS

There were 74,675 confirmed COVID-19 cases in China by Feb 19th, 2020. The overall fatality rate was 2.84%, much higher in Hubei than in other regions (3.27% vs 0.73%). The index of population inflow from Hubei was positively correlated with total (Provincial r=0.9159, p<0.001; City r=0.6311, p<0.001) and primary cases (Provincial r=0.8702, p<0.001; City r=0.6358, p<0.001). The local health emergency measures (eg, city lockdown and traffic control) were associated with reduced infections nationwide. Moreover, the number of public health employees per capita was inversely correlated with total cases (r=−0.6295, p <0.001) and infection rates (r =−0.4912, p <0.01). Similarly, cities with less medical resources had higher fatality (r =−0.4791, p<0.01) and lower cure rates (r = 0.5286, p<0.01) among the confirmed cases.

CONCLUSIONS

The spread of the COVID-19 in China in its early phase was attributed primarily to population movement from Hubei, and effective governmental health emergency measures and adequate medical resources played important roles in subsequent control of epidemic and improved prognosis of affected individuals.

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