The research paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, was published on Monday on Medrxiv.org – a preprint server for health sciences – and was based on data collected until the end of February.

Without strong intervention measures, “the number of confirmed patients outside China will increase tenfold in every 19 days”, the researchers said.

If that were to happen, the number of cases around the world would surpass the figure reported in mainland China within a matter of months.

Jin is the vice-president of Fudan University, one of China’s most prestigious academic institutions. His earlier research helped to trace the common ancestor of modern-day Chinese to a small group of African people who arrived in Asia about 60,000 years ago, and in 2016, he and his team used cutting-edge genetic analysis to help police catch one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers.

Coronavirus ‘highly sensitive’ to high temperatures, Chinese study says

To map the potential spread of the new coronavirus, the researchers used a simple linear model. Given that the publicly available sample size is small, he said other complicated models could lead to confusing or conflicting results.

“The virus-spreading pattern is complex, yet varies across the world,” the researchers said in their paper. “A simple model simplifies the situation and provides a coarse-grained trend estimation.”

After running the model at Fudan University’s computing centre, the team found that the outbreak could be traced back to 34 initial carriers.

“They may have had only mild symptoms and not gone to hospital,” the paper said.

Other scientists have also warned that the outbreak – which the WHO has yet to call a pandemic – may still be in its initial stages.

In a paper published in January, Dr Ira Longini, a biostatistician and adviser to the WHO, predicted that two-thirds of the global population would become infected.

Harvard University epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, who visited China after the outbreak, said in an interview with CBS News on Monday that between 40 and 70 per cent of the world’s population might become infected.

“I think there is real reason for people to be concerned,” he said. “I also think that we can turn that concern into actions that will make the situation better.”

WHO official says there’s no evidence of ‘reinfected’ patients in China

Despite the gloomy forecasts, a study published in medical journal The Lancet in January predicted that the number of confirmed cases in China would surpass 160,000 by early February. As of Saturday morning, the total was less than 81,000.

Beijing has been praised for its efforts to contain the spread of the virus in China, which included locking down the whole of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital and which has a population similar to that of France.

A Chinese government scientist working for a United Nations development programme in Beijing said the global number of infections was subject to many factors including the changing of the seasons and the development of new drugs or vaccines.

If the number of foreign cases continued to rise rapidly, and if other countries “give up”, China’s strict containment measures at home might have been in vain, he said, adding that there could be “unbearable” consequences for the global economy and its people.

“These measures can’t last. We cannot shut the world out. Stopping international exchange will be a disaster, especially to China,” said a researcher who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

“In today’s world, nobody can live happily ever after by solving only his own problems.”