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. 2020 Feb;13(1):3-7.
doi: 10.1111/jebm.12376. Epub 2020 Feb 12.

Preliminary prediction of the basic reproduction number of the Wuhan novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV

Tao Zhou  1 , Quanhui Liu  2 , Zimo Yang  3 , Jingyi Liao  4 , Kexin Yang  2 , Wei Bai  5 , Xin Lu  6 , Wei Zhang  7
Affiliations

Preliminary prediction of the basic reproduction number of the Wuhan novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV

Tao Zhou et al. J Evid Based Med. 2020 Feb.

Abstract

Objectives: To estimate the basic reproduction number of the Wuhan novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

Methods: Based on the susceptible-exposed-infected-removed (SEIR) compartment model and the assumption that the infectious cases with symptoms occurred before 26 January, 2020 are resulted from free propagation without intervention, we estimate the basic reproduction number of 2019-nCoV according to the reported confirmed cases and suspected cases, as well as the theoretical estimated number of infected cases by other research teams, together with some epidemiological determinants learned from the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Results: The basic reproduction number fall between 2.8 and 3.3 by using the real-time reports on the number of 2019-nCoV-infected cases from People's Daily in China and fall between 3.2 and 3.9 on the basis of the predicted number of infected cases from international colleagues.

Conclusions: The early transmission ability of 2019-nCoV is close to or slightly higher than SARS. It is a controllable disease with moderate to high transmissibility. Timely and effective control measures are needed to prevent the further transmissions.

Keywords: 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV); basic reproduction number; epidemiology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Impacts of different key parameters on the estimated basic reproduction numbers. The x‐axis is the number of cases with symptoms at t = 48; (A)–(F) correspond to the six different scenarios for ρ=0.5,0.6,0.7,0.8,0.9,1, the five curves in each figure from top to bottom correspond to the five different cases for Tg = 12, 11, 10, 9, 8
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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