Effective containment explains subexponential growth in recent confirmed COVID-19 cases in China.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32269067.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/science.abb4557 and PMC identifier 7164388.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in mainland China was characterized by a distinctive subexponential increase of confirmed cases during the early phase of the epidemic, contrasting with an initial exponential growth expected for an unconstrained outbreak. We show that this effect can be explained as a direct consequence of containment policies that effectively deplete the susceptible population. To this end, we introduce a parsimonious model that captures both quarantine of symptomatic infected individuals, as well as population-wide isolation practices in response to containment policies or behavioral changes, and show that the model captures the observed growth behavior accurately. The insights provided here may aid the careful implementation of containment strategies for ongoing secondary outbreaks of COVID-19 or similar future outbreaks of other emergent infectious diseases.
Medical subject headings
- Betacoronavirus
- Coronavirus Infections
- Disease Outbreaks
- Pandemics
- Pneumonia, Viral