Risk estimation and prediction of the transmission of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) in the mainland of China excluding Hubei province.

BACKGROUND: In December 2019, an outbreak of coronavirus disease (later named as COVID-19) was identified in Wuhan, China and, later on, detected in other parts of China. Our aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of the evolution of interventions and self-protection measures, estimate the risk of partial lifting control measures and predict the epidemic trend of the virus in the mainland of China excluding Hubei province based on the published data and a novel mathematical model. METHODS: A novel COVID-19 transmission dynamic model incorporating the intervention measures implemented in China is proposed. COVID-19 daily data of the mainland of China excluding Hubei province, including the cumulative confirmed cases, the cumulative deaths, newly confirmed cases and the cumulative recovered cases between 20 January and 3 March 2020, were archived from the National Health Commission of China (NHCC). We parameterize the model by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and estimate the control reproduction number (Rc), as well as the effective daily reproduction ratio- Re(t), of the disease transmission in the mainland of China excluding Hubei province. RESULTS: The estimation outcomes indicate that Rc is 3.36 (95% CI: 3.20-3.64) and Re(t) has dropped below 1 since 31 January 2020, which implies that the containment strategies implemented by the Chinese government in the mainland of China are indeed effective and magnificently suppressed COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, our results show that relieving personal protection too early may lead to a prolonged disease transmission period and more people would be infected, and may even cause a second wave of epidemic or outbreaks. By calculating the effective reproduction ratio, we prove that the contact rate should be kept at least less than 30% of the normal level by April, 2020. CONCLUSIONS: To ensure the pandemic ending rapidly, it is necessary to maintain the current integrated restrict interventions and self-protection measures, including travel restriction, quarantine of entry, contact tracing followed by quarantine and isolation and reduction of contact, like wearing masks, keeping social distance, etc. People should be fully aware of the real-time epidemic situation and keep sufficient personal protection until April. If all the above conditions are met, the outbreak is expected to be ended by April in the mainland of China apart from Hubei province.

An SEIARD epidemic model for COVID-19 in Mexico: Mathematical analysis and state-level forecast.

We propose an SEIARD mathematical model to investigate the current outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mexico. Our model incorporates the asymptomatic infected individuals, who represent the majority of the infected population (with symptoms or not) and could play an important role in spreading the virus without any knowledge. We calculate the basic reproduction number (R 0) via the next-generation matrix method and estimate the per day infection, death and recovery rates. The local stability of the disease-free equilibrium is established in terms of R 0. A sensibility analysis is performed to determine the relative importance of the model parameters to the disease transmission. We calibrate the parameters of the SEIARD model to the reported number of infected cases, fatalities and recovered cases for several states in Mexico by minimizing the sum of squared errors and attempt to forecast the evolution of the outbreak until November 2020.

An updated estimation of the risk of transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov).

The basic reproduction number of an infectious agent is the average number of infections one case can generate over the course of the infectious period, in a naïve, uninfected population. It is well-known that the estimation of this number may vary due to several methodological issues, including different assumptions and choice of parameters, utilized models, used datasets and estimation period. With the spreading of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection, the reproduction number has been found to vary, reflecting the dynamics of transmission of the coronavirus outbreak as well as the case reporting rate. Due to significant variations in the control strategies, which have been changing over time, and thanks to the introduction of detection technologies that have been rapidly improved, enabling to shorten the time from infection/symptoms onset to diagnosis, leading to faster confirmation of the new coronavirus cases, our previous estimations on the transmission risk of the 2019-nCoV need to be revised. By using time-dependent contact and diagnose rates, we refit our previously proposed dynamics transmission model to the data available until January 29th, 2020 and re-estimated the effective daily reproduction ratio that better quantifies the evolution of the interventions. We estimated when the effective daily reproduction ratio has fallen below 1 and when the epidemics will peak. Our updated findings suggest that the best measure is persistent and strict self-isolation. The epidemics will continue to grow, and can peak soon with the peak time depending highly on the public health interventions practically implemented.