Open AccessDynamic Estimation of Epidemiological Parameters of Covid-19 Outbreak and Effects of Interventions on Its Spread
Author(s) -
Hongzhe Zhang,
Xiaohang Zhao,
Kexin Yin,
Yiren Yan,
Wei Qian,
Bintong Chen,
Xiao Fang
Publication year - 2021
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.579
H-Index - 13
ISSN - 2279-9028
DOI - 10.4081/jphr.2021.1906
Subject(s) - outbreak , estimation , epidemiology , psychological intervention , covid-19 , basic reproduction number , pandemic , government (linguistics) , medicine , environmental health , geography , demography , statistics , virology , mathematics , population , economics , infectious disease (medical specialty) , disease , sociology , management , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy
Background A key challenge in estimating epidemiological parameters for a pandemic such as the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan is the discrepancy between the officially reported number of infections and the true number of infections. A common approach to tackling the challenge is to use the number of infections exported from the originating city to infer the true number. This approach can only provide a static estimate of the epidemiological parameters before city lockdown because there are almost no exported cases thereafter.Methods We propose a Bayesian estimation method that dynamically estimates the epidemiological parameters by recovering true numbers of infections from day-to-day official numbers. To illustrate the use of this method, we provide a comprehensive retrospection on how the COVID-19 had progressed in Wuhan from January 19 to March 5, 2020. Particularly, we estimate that the outbreak sizes by January 23 and March 5 were 11,239 [95% CI 4,794–22,372] and 124,506 [95% CI 69,526–265,113], respectively.Results The effective reproduction number attained its maximum on January 24 (3.42 [95% CI 3.34–3.50]) and became less than 1 from February 7 (0.76 [95% CI 0.65–0.92]). We also estimate the effects of two major government interventions on the spread of COVID-19 in Wuhan.Conclusions This case study by our proposed method affirms the believed importance and effectiveness of imposing tight nonessential travel restrictions and affirm the importance and effectiveness of government interventions ( e.g., transportation suspension and large scale hospitalization) for effective mitigation of COVID-19 community spread.