An investigation of transmission control measures during the first 50 days of the COVID-19 epidemic in China
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 8 May 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 368 (6491), 638-642
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb6105
Abstract
Responding to an outbreak of a novel coronavirus [agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] in December 2019, China banned travel to and from Wuhan city on 23 January 2020 and implemented a national emergency response. We investigated the spread and control of COVID-19 using a data set that included case reports, human movement, and public health interventions. The Wuhan shutdown was associated with the delayed arrival of COVID-19 in other cities by 2.91 days. Cities that implemented control measures preemptively reported fewer cases on average (13.0) in the first week of their outbreaks compared with cities that started control later (20.6). Suspending intracity public transport, closing entertainment venues, and banning public gatherings were associated with reductions in case incidence. The national emergency response appears to have delayed the growth and limited the size of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, averting hundreds of thousands of cases by 19 February (day 50).Keywords
Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (81673234)
- Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program by CAST (2018QNRC001)
- Beijing Natural Science Foundation (JQ18025)
- Beijing Advanced Innovation Program for Land Surface Science (None)
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Impact of human mobility on the emergence of dengue epidemics in PakistanProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015
- The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion PhenomenaScience, 2013
- Quantifying the Impact of Human Mobility on MalariaScience, 2012
- Global trends in emerging infectious diseasesNature, 2008
- Synchrony, Waves, and Spatial Hierarchies in the Spread of InfluenzaScience, 2006
- Strategies for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in Southeast AsiaNature, 2005
- Discrete Time Modelling of Disease Incidence Time Series by Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo MethodsJournal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 2005
- The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseasesNature, 2004
- Travelling waves and spatial hierarchies in measles epidemicsNature, 2001
- Spatial population dynamics: analyzing patterns and processes of population synchronyTrends in Ecology & Evolution, 1999