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. 2020 Jun:95:308-310.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.04.044. Epub 2020 Apr 22.

Preliminary estimates of the reproduction number of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Republic of Korea and Italy by 5 March 2020

Zian Zhuang  1 , Shi Zhao  2 , Qianying Lin  3 , Peihua Cao  4 , Yijun Lou  1 , Lin Yang  5 , Shu Yang  6 , Daihai He  7 , Li Xiao  8
Affiliations

Preliminary estimates of the reproduction number of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Republic of Korea and Italy by 5 March 2020

Zian Zhuang et al. Int J Infect Dis. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has caused 6088 cases and 41 deaths in Republic of Korea, and 3144 cases and 107 death in Italy by 5 March 2020, respectively. We modelled the transmission process in the Republic of Korea and Italy with a stochastic model, and estimated the basic reproduction number R0 as 2.6 (95% CI: 2.3-2.9) or 3.2 (95% CI: 2.9-3.5) in the Republic of Korea, under the assumption that the exponential growth starting on 31 January or 5 February 2020, and 2.6 (95% CI: 2.3-2.9) or 3.3 (95% CI: 3.0-3.6) in Italy, under the assumption that the exponential growth starting on 5 February or 10 February 2020, respectively.

Keywords: Basic reproduction number; COVID-19; Coronavirus disease 2019; Italy; Republic of Korea.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The observed (dots) and fitted (curves) number of COVID-19 cases in the Republic of Korea and Italy. Panels (a) and (b) show the results in the Republic of Korea with the exponential growth startingon 31 January and 5 February 2020 respectively. Panels (c) and (d) show the results in Italy with the exponential growth starting on 5 February and 10 February 2020, respectively. In all panels, the grey curves are 1000 simulations, the blue bold curve is the simulation median, and the blue dashed curves are the 95%CI.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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