Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Volume 92, Issue -, Pages 214-217Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.01.050
Keywords
Basic reproduction number; Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
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Funding
- General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong, China [15205119]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [61672013]
- Huaian Key Laboratory for Infectious Diseases Control and Prevention, Huaian, Jiangsu, China [HAP201704]
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Backgrounds: An ongoing outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pneumonia hit a major city in China, Wuhan, December 2019 and subsequently reached other provinces/regions of China and other countries. We present estimates of the basic reproduction number, R-0, 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 (gamma), we estimated R-0 by 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 mean R-0 ranges 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 of R-0. Conclusion: The mean estimate of R-0 for the 2019-nCoV ranges from 2.24 to 3.58, and is significantly larger than 1. Our findings indicate the potential of 2019-nCoV to cause outbreaks. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases.
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