COVID-19 Epidemic Outside China: 34 Founders and Exponential Growth
Yi Li, Meng Liang, Xianhong Yin, Xiaoyu Liu, Meng Hao, Zixin Hu, Yi Wang, Li Jin
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.01.20029819
Abstract
Background: In December 2019, pneumonia infected with a novel coronavirus burst in Wuhan, China. Now the situation is almost controlled in China but is worse outside China. We aimed to build a mathematical model to capture the global trend of epidemics outside China. Methods: In this retrospective, outside-China diagnosis number reported from Jan 21 to Feb 28, 2020 was downloaded from WHO website. We develop a simple regression model on these numbers: log10 (Nt+34)=0.0515*t+2.075 where Nt is the total diagnosed patient till the ith day, t=1 at Feb 1. Findings: Based on this model, we estimate that there have been about 34 unobserved founder patients at the beginning of spread outside China. The global trend is approximately exponential, with the rate of 10 folds every 19 days.
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