Population Movement, City Closure in Wuhan, and Geographical Expansion of the COVID-19 Infection in China in January 2020

Background The unprecedented outbreak of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection in Wuhan City has caused global concern; the outflow of the population from Wuhan was believed to be a main reason for the rapid and large-scale spread of the disease, so the government implemented a city-closure measure to prevent its transmission considering the large amount of travel before the Chinese New Year. Methods Based on the daily reported new cases and the population-movement data between 1 and 31 January, we examined the effects of population outflow from Wuhan on the geographical expansion of the infection in other provinces and cities of China, as well as the impacts of the city closure in Wuhan using different closing-date scenarios. Results We observed a significantly positive association between population movement and the number of the COVID-19 cases. The spatial distribution of cases per unit of outflow population indicated that the infection in some areas with a large outflow of population might have been underestimated, such as Henan and Hunan provinces. Further analysis revealed that if the city-closure policy had been implemented 2 days earlier, 1420 (95% confidence interval, 1059–1833) cases could have been prevented, and if 2 days later, 1462 (1090–1886) more cases would have been possible. Conclusions Our findings suggest that population movement might be one important trigger for the transmission of COVID-19 infection in China, and the policy of city closure is effective in controlling the epidemic.